Smith College - Smith College Yearbook (Northampton, MA)

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Cordelia from the hands of the hangman. Was Edmund ' s life the retribution of Gloucester ' s sin and if so was not the penalty too great? Let men measure the conse- quences of their deeds. I have spoken before of the sense of violence and sorrow that the word tragedy brings to us. Couple this with retribution, in the most common sense of the word, punishment, and the darkness deepens. Yet even as a world clothed in darkness may seem to be filled with light when seen from another planet, so retribution may be used in its other sense, reward. The tragedy is still sad but not despairing. In the darkest nights, when the sun has long since set and the good and the evil alike have gone to rest, out of the heaven there seems to come a song, wordless, noiseless, pure and holy, the song of the silence of silence, the harmony of night. So in the darkest hours of doubt and despair there may come to a Brutus, a Portia. Like a beautiful lady, rich in the jewels of innocence and beauty, clad in the garments of piety, she walked into a troubled world, and knocking at her husband ' s heart placed courage and purpose there. Brave soul, daring to rush into the very midst of the battle of life and there to stay until its noise and violence became too great for the delicate fibers of her heart and she must die of grief. What was her reward? Only a few lives sanctified, purified, because she had given herself to form a part of them. Again through the silence of the night another song is wafted. It tells of a lonely mountain, of a terrible storm, of thunder, of lightning, of icy winds, of beating rain. It tells of an old man who once rich, now poor, must face the tempest, must see in its violence the reflection of his own sad life. Yet King Lear even in the most bitter 16

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I am thy father ' s spirit ; Doom ' d for a certain term to walk the night ; And, for the day, confin ' d to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature. Are burn ' t and purged away. Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother ' s hand Of life, of crown, and queen, at once despatch ' d ; Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. Shakspere makes very few references to future punishment. The subject did not interest him very deeply. Sin if not punished in this world will receive due retribution in the next, but it is to the penalties of this life that he would draw our attention. In the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne has portrayed to us the child Pearl as the emblem of her mother ' s sin. Often would the mother awake in the morning to rind the eyes of the little one fixed upon the letter. Strive to get away from that innocent gaze and she could not. Throw the letter away, and the child, laughingly, would run and bring it back again. Shakspere has touched upon the same theme. Sin may be inherited. Take for instance the case of Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. A man born in sin, he was a man of sin, with no conception, it would almost seem, of right, unless his last act be taken into consideration — that of trying to save King Lear and 15

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hour of sorrow and misery was not alone. Loyal and true in the times of prosperity. Kent only increased his fidelity in the days of disaster. He was of such a pure, loyal nature that he must love where love was most needed, must serve when all hope of glory and riches to be gained had vanished. Knocked about, buffeted by the enemies of the King, he gained what was better than pearls, more precious than rubies, the name of true friend. Imogen with her unbroken faith in her faithless Leonatus is in herself a poem. Edgar guiding his blind father, a masterpiece of the richness of human pity. God lives not alone in the heavens, he has scattered his divinity over the whole earth. The retribution of love is love. Shakspere was a great optimist ; he believed in the power of love to grow, in the power of virtue to generate virtue. It is the old example from nature. A lily will grow more beautiful in the bright sunshine and under the blue sky ; so man ' s soul will grow with each good deed. Thrust the lily into the dark and it will shrivel away; take man away from good and his soul will die. Moreover, virtue cannot be lost. Like matter it cannot be destroyed. Strive to smother it and it will burst into song. Strive to conceal it and it will break down its bulwarks. Virtue must be ultimately recognized. That is its final right. An Othello may question the faith of a Desdemona but at the end of his life he will be moved to say : Speak of me as one Whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe. 17