Portia's speech

Portia's speech employs the use of several metaphors to help get her point across. First she says, "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces." Portia is saying that if doing good deeds were as easy as knowing how to do them, then everyone would be better off. Likewise, small chapels would be grand churches and poor men's houses would be giant palaces. Later in the speech Portia says, "I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching." Portia is saying that its easier to preach goodness to others than it is to do the good you preach yourself. In a way she is making a comment on human nature, saying that people can talk about all these lofty ideas of goodness all they want but very few ever actually follow through.
   In my research, I found an article by Lee Jamieson that discussed the character of Portia. In his article, Jamieson writes how Portia spends her whole life being passed from the control of one man to another. She was in her father's control while he was alive and after he passed, she is still in control. She is bound to be married to any man who passes her father's love test and she does not even get a say in the matter. Once she is married that control will be passed to her husband and she will be under the rule of a new master. Her speech describes her frustration with the lack of free will she has and how it bothers her to her core.