f
Vol. %
Portland, Oregon, November, 1906
No. $
The Test of Life.
■■ •'
м
•*
Francis G. Marquette.
How silent and how soon the leaves are
old. .
__л_
.
I marked them yesterday, a verdant
wave
Tossing in vigor their own . sap-tide
" . gave,
A riot of young beauty uncontrolled.
The bleak day hangs about them dripping
cold,
They go with silence frailly to their
grave ; • _ i_- _ _
All that the fancy loved must memory
save,
The summer’s beauty falls in " dateless
mold.
So, child, a night has changed above thy
ygjiead,
A^span of dreams, ye): all too soon thy
hand ' _ ' _ :
НШГ
strained around reality of things.
The fight is in thy cheeks, the hectic red
Of hopes that die as leaves; thyself
must stand
Naked, now life its challenge at the
flings. . ‘
Hamlet.
Stanley McKay.
AMLE T, — Shakespeare’s
greatest tragedy, holds
the source of more criti-
’ cal study than any other
of the great dramatist’s
works. Critics and schol-
. ars-^-men who have given
• large, portions of . their
time to such work— have
produced volume _up;on _ volume on the
various critical phases^ of j Hamlet.
There is the question of- real au¬
thorship; that of the true revision of
early versions .of the play, and the prob¬
lem of date,, with which master minds
have wrestled in the past, and td which
much attention is given in our own day,
with little of definite result; leaving no
foundation on which we can safely rest
our opinions, without fear of their crum-
..bling at the onslaught of the first critic
that chooses to advance -any plausible
hypothesis. .
This short paper cannot pretend to
cast any new light into the forest of pres¬
ent theories. It is but a .schoolboy’s ap¬
preciation or study of the master drama
tist’s portrayal of his greatest character.
Shakespeare’s description runs the full
gamut of the hytman emotions. There is
scarcely a phase of character which, in
one. or other of his plays, he has not.de-.
picted^with a perfect mastery ;-the work-,
ings and effects of love, jealousy, pride,,
avarice, revenge — in fact, -all the natural
emotions — are .shown either through the
action of his plays as a whole, or through
the representation of some one particu¬
lar character. This gives rise to his va¬
riety in the portrayal of his characters.
The minor personages in some of his'
plays have been given the greater share
of his attention, while in others he would
seem to have well nigh exhausted his
best efforts on the major characters.
Hamlet has the highest place in the-
latter class. While many of the other
characters of the tragedy are of consid¬
erable descriptive importance, it is
Hamlet, his mental state and his actions,
that receive the minutest, description. Re¬
gardless of where the other characters
appear,- what— they do-or plap— Hamlet
V
