80
suakspkkk's womkk.
vol. vnt,
K
Unit Ophelia was fur too frail ami tender
a plant for this nulo world of ours. Her
lovo was deep: but at thu command of
her father, she attempted to stifle it. She
seems too good to hate, too noble to
disobey her falhcr,s command, too pure
to liyc in the troublesome times that sur.
rounded her. Hamlet's madness, for such
it seemed to her, destroys the buoyancy
of her life; the death of her father un
worthy as lie may have been, yet loved by
her destroys a mind at once so simple,
pure and chaste that the rough stains of
the world found no lodgment in it.
Even after the wreck of her mind, she
sings and loves.
But Shaksperc's power to paint life
was not confined to love. In Lady Mac
betli, we find another passion developed,
that of ambition. True to his ideal, he
has not made her wanting in every virtue:
love she seems to have had for her hus
band ; and sometimes she shows that she
was not destitute of some feeling for liu
inanity: but the overpowering passion of
her life was ambition. She shows her
self a stronger character than her bus
band: when lie wishes to draw back from
the course that he himself had suggested,
she says:
"What beast was it then
That made you break this enterprise to me;
When yon durst do it, then you were a man.
And to bu more than what you wore
You would he so much more the man."
She knows no such word as fail, and in
a righteous cause, such power and will
would not have failed. But the blood
upon her hands could not be educed.
Shakspere has shown us that ambition,
when it resolves to succeed without re.
gard to means, must fail. And what a
failure? Who would endure the tortures
of imagination that haunted Lady Mac
beth after her horrid deed for all the
world contains?
But while in Lady Macbeth we can not
help but admire the energy and firmness
and strength of mind that she possessed,
Shakspere has given us in King Lear's
daughters, Generil and llogan, two char
acters that do not seem to possess any
thing lovely or admirable. Everything
they do seems to bo of a low, petty kind.
Tlieir deeeitfulncsB may be seen in their
first words, where, apparently, language
fails them to tell their love for their fa
ther. Like many other people, both then
and now, their love was in words and not
in deeds, or, as Cornelia expresses it, "I
am sure 1113' love's more richer than my
tongue." As soon as they had obtained
their desires and were at the head of the
government, how different their words
and actions. King Lear was reproached
by one, and then reviled by the other; and
finally driven from the house in the midst
of a dreadful storm.
Words fail to convey the loathing and
disgust that one feels for such creatures.
Yet can we affirm that they are not true
to nature? How often we see parents
abandoned by tlieir children, and lefl to
shift as best they can.
But to this dark picture there is a
brighter side. Cordelia, although she
does not say much, acts so we may know
the purity of her life and character. She
is spurned by her father, driven into ex
ile, and deprived of her share of the inhcr
itancc;yct she never forgets the duties
she owes to him ; and at last when he is
dr'ven into despair and madness by his
other daughters, she comes from her hap
py home in France to rescue him. But
alas! Here too, the hale and envy of her
sisters follow her; and when she falls into"
tlieir hands, they cruelly put her to death ;
but not till they themselves have received
the due reward of their lives of shame
and dishonor: not till Lear recognises her
worth, and she has received his blessing.
W.
Thought is the first, second and third
requisite to all mental excellence of elo
tjuence as well as of composition. Qrim-ke.