Portrait of a Lady

The poem’s epigraph is from Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta (1590). Marlowe was an Elizabethan dramatist, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Although the epigraph does not show it, the lines are spoken by two different characters. Friar Barnardine speaks T. S. Eliot’s opening line in an accusation of Barabas, the play’s eponymous Maltese merchant—“Thou hast committed—” (Line 1). At this, Barabas interrupts Barnardine to finish the accusation with a lesser crime than the ones of which he is actually guilty, adding the next two lines of Eliot’s epigraph: “Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead” (Lines 2-3). Barabas thus dismisses the importance of his actions and excuses himself as if they do not matter if their victim has died; he refuses to feel guilt. The epigraph reflects on Eliot’s poem in several ways. First, it hints that Eliot’s two characters were at some point sexually involved. At the same time, Barabas’s shamelessness is appealing and aspirational to the speaker, who would also like to be able to dismiss any consequences of his encounters with the lady. This is suggested when he muses on the lady’s death (which echoes Barabas’s callous “the wench is dead” [Line 3]).