"Portrait of a Lady" makes two allusions that set up the poem before it even begins. These allusions introduce some of the poem's key themes and motifs, such as romance, guilt, class, and death.
The first allusion is the poem's title itself, which recalls Henry James's 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady:
- The plot revolves around Isabel Archer, a young and fiercely independent American woman who attempts to make her own way traveling throughout Europe.
- Isabel is pursued by a number of eligible suitors who offer increased wealth and status, but she politely turns them down in hopes of maintaining her freedom.
- By the time the book ends, however, Isabel has inherited a great deal of money and been deceived into marrying a man who is after her new wealth.
Like Isabel, the speaker of Eliot's poem tries to maintain his independence by traveling and rebuffing romantic advances, but, in doing so, he gives up the opportunity for fulfilling relationships and is left only with empty relationships and social rituals. The allusion to Isabel in the poem's title thus calls attention to her similarities with the speaker—and not with the lady, as one might expect! Indeed, this "Portrait of a Lady" shapes up to really be a portrait of the speaker, and it suggests that he will share Isabel's bleak fate if he doesn't heed the lady's warnings.
The poem itself then opens with an epigraph, which is adapted from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta. This drama follows a Maltese Jewish Merchant named Barabas, who goes on a murder spree after having his fortunes stripped away by the local government. In this extract from Act IV, two friars confront Barabas, accusing him of murder. He responds by interrupting them and admitting to a number of lesser, unrelated crimes such as extramarital sex. The original quote thus has multiple speakers:
Friar Barnadine: Thou has committed—
Barabas: Fornication: but that was in another country;
And besides, the wench is dead.
Because the dialogue is combined in the epigraph, its speaker seems to interrupt and argue against himself. Fittingly enough, given this opening epigraph, the speaker of "Portrait of a Lady" will go on to question and contradict himself throughout the poem.