Smith College - Smith College Yearbook (Northampton, MA)

Page 18 text:

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy ; It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on. Why ! why is this ? Think ' st thou, I ' d make a life of jealousy, To follow still the changes of the moon With fresh suspicions. Yet jealousy, the green-eyed monster came and took possession of the very soul of Othello, and he that was of a free and open nature, that thinks men honest that but seem to be so was changed into a man to whom revenge seemed dearer than life, to whom love seemed almost an evil. Poor Desdemona, still loving though unloved; she passed out of the world, with the tune of Willow, willow echoing in her ear, while with her lips she praised the one who caused her death. What does Shakspere mean by this sad tale? Why should Desdemona die? Why should Othello lose all when life had begun to look so fair? Why was he saved from the flood only to be hurled into a daily death of mistrust and despair? Above all why was Iago spared to live unharmed his dreadful life? What is the law of retribu- tion after all if such things may happen in the world? We have entered the valley of doubt. We cannot understand. Iago lived — yet what a life. Incapable of love, incapable of being loved, the most unhappy man the world has ever seen. It is the strength of the base element, Ruskin says in The Queen of the Air, 10

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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

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that is so dreadful in the serpent, it is the very omnipotence of the earth. It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other being shrivelled and abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete and crush the tiger. It is a divine hierograph of the demoniac power of the earth ; of the entire earthly nature. Such is the serpent Iago Dowden writes. The serpent Iago, the serpent, the basest form of life, the symbol of innate sin, against which every man ' s hand is turned, at the sight of which every man shudders. Such is the serpent Iago. ' Was it not a greater punishment for such a one to live than to die? Learn the lesson that Shakspere would teach, that Phillips Brooks in these later years has taught. The most awful punishment that man can ever receive is the ruin of his soul. You cannot sin and stand still. Just as it would be impossible for the earth to cease to rotate even for the one-millionth part of a second, so it is impossible for the soul to ever be at rest. If the sun did not attract the earth and hold her under his sway, some other fixed star would. All of which is a parable. The soul is active. It, too, is revolving in a universe, attracted by good and evil. Let it cease to follow good, and evil will get possession of it. Iago had lost his birthright. Instead of expanding into the divine, his soul was shrinking into the awful nothingness. It is the lesson which all men must learn. So much for Iago. Let it be granted that he received his retribution, through the death of his soul. What of Desdemona? What of Cordelia, who lay strangled on King Lear ' s breast? What of Imogen? They had not sinned and yet they suffered. 11