Smith College - Smith College Yearbook (Northampton, MA)

Page 16 text:

' ' The time is out of joint — O cursed spite ! That ever I was born to set it right ! was the key-note of Hamlet ' s being. Pondering over life and over the sins of his fellow-men each day Hamlet becomes more desolate. He seeks for the cause of the evil, for some evil must lie at the bottom of the State ' s upheaval. Finally his father comes and reveals to him the guilt of the king, his uncle. And what does Hamlet do? Seek for revenge at once? No; ponders, philosophizes, curses fate, cries aloud in his horror of the sin : Use every man after his desert and who should ' scape whipping. Then in his despondency: How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seems to me all the uses of the world ! Cries but does not act. If Brutus had been Hamlet how great a change there would have been ! One of Hamlet ' s chief failings, a direct result probably of his inactivity, was his lack of power to see things in their true perspective. He had no power of insight. He could not read character, could not understand men. Because of this lack of knowledge he put everything in a false position. Ophelia, he exalted, thought that the poor, innocent child, perhaps on account of her very innocence, must have a strength on which he might lean, and when he tried to test her and found that the staff of her slender trust would break, he cast her away as useless. Poor child, she needed the support of a strong will to guide her. No wonder that innocent and weak as 8

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Yet even the tragedies have joy interwoven with the pain. There is the love of zl Juliet answering back to the love of a Romeo, a love misplaced, not sinful. The story of the star-crossed lovers is not really sad; there is nothing gloomy in their death. It was not even premature. Their love for each other had risen to its highest point. True, in after years there might have been added to it the peace and quiet that comes at even-tide. As it was, pure, innocent, chaste, romantic, it could not have grown in height. It had already reached its climax. It was strong enough, deep enough, to change the child Juliet, timid, obedient, dependent, into the active, inde- pendent woman. It was a love powerful enough to transform Romeo ' s impulse into purpose. The lesson of the tragedy was not designed to be learnt by the lovers, nor, do I think, was it meant for the heads of the houses Capulet and Montague. Friar Laurence was its victim. To do a great right, do a little wrong, Bassanio begged of Portia. It must not be, it cannot be, she answered. Friar Laurence was an old man but he had to learn over again the lesson so frequently repeated in childhood. Do not play with evil, it is deceptive, cunning as a serpent, more fatal in its sting. Removed from this tragedy in years as well as in depth is the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In it we read of a life that might have been an active force to purify and uplift the rotten State of Denmark, ruined because, instead of doing deeds, he dreamed them all day long. Nothing can be more sad than the failure of such a life, stunted as it was from the beginning by its very inactivity.

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she was, she should yield herself to a painless death rather than live a painful life. It is not until the last part of the play that Hamlet begins to live an active life. At once the change in his moral nature becomes apparent. He begins to grow. If he could have lived to see the king and the queen dead; if he could have lived with Horatio by his side to guide and help him, what might he not have grown to be ? Death came too soon; and, oh the pity of it ! A nature cramped, shattered, broken, because it lived in itself, in thoughts, not deeds, in ghosts, not men. A mind dwarfed that might have been expanded. If he could only have learnt the lesson from nature. An oak-tree cannot grow in a flower-pot. It must break the sides of the jar and spread its roots into the earth. That lesson he did not learn. Oh, the pity, the pity of it ! A dreamer too, was Timon of Athens. Like Hamlet he could not find his right place in the world, because he did not understand the people of the world. Rich, powerful, generous, his court was crowded day in and day out with flatterers whom he called friends. Innocent as a child, impulsive, generous, simple, he believed them to be as sincere in all that they did or said as he himself would have been. So he lived on in his merry,- careless life, intemperate in all things, in love, in giving, in living. The blow came; his money lost, his friends gone, and he left to face the world alone. Never having learnt the lesson of control, having no one to restrain him, hating as passionately as he once had loved, he wandered to the forest, there to strive to forget mankind. So the lover of men changed into the misanthrope: the optimist into the pessimist. Such is the lesson of intemperance. 9