Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine ed advocates at court. Yet her subsequent submissive womanly surrender to Bassanio contradicts certain modern ideas of the wo- man ' s suffrage faction, and repudiates the idea that Portia was a mannish woman. In the troublous times depicted in the chronicle plays, we get a group of unhappy storm-tossed women. Shakespeare makes them subservient to the will of man, and accentuates their woes by a cer- tain hardness of treatment. She is a woman, therefore may be won, is the cynical cry. The repulsive hunchback, Richard of Gloster, slayer of her former husband, demands and receives the hand of Lady Anne over the corpse of her dead husband ' s father. Was ever woman in like manner woo ' d? Constance ' s mother- ly heart is broken. Here I and sorrow sit! she cries, and casts herself on the ground with, Here is my throne. Alas! I am a woman, friendless, hopeless! is the pathetic cry of Queen Kath- arine. But amid these sorrowful heroines comes one bright sun- ray, in the person of Lady Percy, merry, tender and spirited, the best vindication of the charge against Shakespeare that at this period his women characters are all dolorous ones. In the third period the poet ' s horizon is so large that he por- trays every type of feminine character, and whereas in the Chronicle plays, comparatively speaking, there are few women characters, in the higher comedies we get the stage full of them. Shake- speare shows a great advance on the women of the first period ; in many cases, as with Julia and Hero, he takes the same theme, and we can compare how much broader and firmer is his touch. Here are girlish, captivating Rosalind, full of sentiment, but laughing at sentimentality; forlorn Viola, indiscreet Desdemona, dignified Olivia, naive Katharine of France, and winsome Beatrice. If one may digress, Shakespeare in creating the shrew, Kathar- ine, has the same opinion as the old Turkish seer, whose cantank- erous wife one day drowned herself in a fit of temper. The old man went down to the river-bank and started up-stream looking for her body. But, Effendim, remonstrated his followers, who thought his mind was unhinged with the shock, surely by all the laws of Nature thy wife will float down-stream! Not so, said the sage, continuing his way, she was a woman; therefore will she go contrary. Then we come to the luckless women : Ophelia, the victim of circumstance ; Cordelia, sweet, but obstinate, and lacking in tact ; and lastly, the women of whom it might be said: Let it not be believed for womanhood — Regan, Goneril and, later, Lady Mac- beth. In this group we have the tide of po etry, rhythm, music, mer- riment, pathos, melancholy, hope, misanthropy, which we have traced from a little stream, risen to a mighty flood. We see woman in her many phases, good women, wicked women, heroines, angels, monsters, all true to life, and whose counterparts we may find in history or in the world of today. 35

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Havergal College Magazine SHAKESPEARE ' S HEROINES. Of the 137 feminine characters in Shakespeare ' s plays, 71 are finished character studies, possessing their own value as such, as well as their dramatic value. Among these come readily to mind Opheiia, Portia, Lady Macbeth. The remaining 66 may be class- ed as minor studies, and while they do not play important roles as do their more exalted sisters, yet they are indispensable to the plots in which they appear, and Shakespeare is remarkable for the care which he expends on his minor characters. Though Shake- speare portrays ideal women, yet his characters on the whole are so human and true to life as to warrant the assumption that he adapted them from living originals, as he did his plots from exist- ing plays. Dividing the women characters into groups according to their chronological order, it is interesting to denote the development and the various phrases through which the poet passes. The first period is bounded roughly by Love ' s Labour Lost and Romeo and Juiiet ; the second period includes The Merchant of Venice and several Chronicle plays ; the third period embraces higher come- dies, as Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and later tragedies, as Lear, Othello, Macbeth ; while the fourth period contains three beautiful romances, The Tempest, A Win- ter ' s Tale and Cymbeline. The early heroines, with the exception of Juliet, are not as clearly defined as the later ones. They have sparkle, poetry and youth, but they are not grown up yet. They deal in love philtres and poison cups, they dabble in love in rhymed stanzas, and not love in real earnest. Here we have Helena and Hermia eloping with their respective lovers without a second thought, running hand-in- hand through the woods and quarrelling outrageously under the trees. A serious theme is taken in Two Gentlemen of Verona, but Julia is portrayed as fondly oblivious of any wrong, and thus materials for tragedy are treated as comedy. All the women of this period show the poet ' s great potentialities of strength and genius, which he fully developed in his later plays. The second group covers most of the chronicle plays, but takes in one great comedy, at least, The Merchant of Venice. Here we find the feminine character has gained much in strength, the women ha e intellect as well as heart — there is still the music and poetry as of old, but for the conjunction of poetry and strength Shakespeare is unique. Portia is a good example of this. She shows a balance of heart and head, and possesses besides what writers of less perspi- cacity have denied her sex, namely, a sense of humour. One of Shakespeare ' s own adjectives, sunny, aptly describes her, and this smiling, sweet temper must have considerably softened her lot under her father ' s embarrassing will. Again, how Portia must have enjoyed her adventure in man ' s costume, and what joy she must have felt at nonplussing the learn- 34

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Havergal College Magazine The fourth and last period represents the calm after the storm. Here we have an Arcadia, in which walk Miranda, Perdita and Imogen. This is the atmosphere of idylls and dreams, the bright fancies of youth are there, and though the frolic and sparkle of the earlier heroines are absent, yet the happy smile is left ; and in place of the violence and turmoil of the women of the second and third periods, Shakespeare gives us a picture of peace and serenity as befits the close of day, the end of life, when ships glide out of tumul- tuous surges into ports and happy havens. Khan um. THE LIBRARY Since the last number of the magazine was printed, great changes have come to pass, but none more welcome than the one affecting our library. No longer does the bookcase stand in a dark corner of the corridor, but has all for its own the large room on the ground floor known formerly as the K. G. Although new books have from time to time been added, several of the new shelves necessarily are still empty. Two of our old girls, Gwen Inman and Edna Henderson, no doubt moved by that dumb appeal, have pre- sented us with a volume in memory of their stay in the college. This seems a very practical way of showing that appreciation of the school life that :ill our outgoing boarders feel, and I heartily thank Gwen and Edna for the thought. Already the idea has been well received, and many books have been promised by girls who are leaving. I should also like to thank the two girls, Maisie Longbottom and Dorothy Allonby, whose cheerful help in indexing and distributing the books has been of the greatest value possible throughout the year. The Librarian. SUMMER IS COMING The winter will soon be over, The sun will commence to shine. The lawn will be white with clover, ' Twill soon be summer time. Beautiful spring is coming, And the flowers fyegin to bloom ; The bees will start their humming, And summer will be here soon. Green are the leaves coming out, They are budding far and near; Pansies turning their heads about, Saying, Summer will soon be here. M. S. Aikins, Form IV. Upper. 36