department of the University finding it advantageous to offer instruction and conduct research in this field is welcome to do so. In the words of Bateson: "You will be aware that the claims put forward in the name of Genetics are high, but I trust to be able to show you that they are not high without reason. It is the ambition of every one who in youth devotes himself to the search for natural truth, that his work may be found somewhere in the main stream of progress. So long only as he keeps something of the limitless hope with which his voyage of discovery began, will his courage and his spirit last. The moment we most dread is one in which it may appear that after all, our effort has been spent in exploring some petty tributary, or worse, a back-water of the great current. It is because Genetic research is still pushing forward in the central undifferentiated trunk of biological science that we confess no guilt of presumption in declaring boldly that whatever difficulty may be in store for those who cast in their lot with us, they need fear no disillusionment or misgiving that their labour has been wasted on a paltry quest."' SHAKESPEARE'S WOMEN* CONSTANCE COLLIER Ladies and Gentlemen:-I am very much honored and flattered that you want me to speak to you at all. Had I known such an honor was in store for me, I should have been working for a long time to try and find out some interesting things to tell you. But good things of life always come to one unexpectedly, so I did not have much. time at my disposal. I am not going to try to say anything that is clever, or of serious value to you. I am only going to speak about Shakespeare from the woman's point of view, and therefore, the sentimental point of view, as all true women are sentimentalists. Shakespeare, it is splendid to know, thought well of women, of their achievements and capabilities. Nearly always in his plays, especially in the comedies, woman is triumphant, self-reliant, fine, honorable, and true: witness Imogen, Portia, Beatrice, Viola and Rosalind. He created the universal type. In the kaleidoscope of life, his women stand out as the absolute example-the witchery and gaiety of Rosalind; the buoyancy and charm of Viola; the wistful, tender devotion of Desdemona and Ophelia. Even his she-villains have something noble about them-Cressida and Lady Macbeth-the two great types. *An address delivered at the University, on invitation of the Musical and Dramatic Committee, October 28, 1913. Cleopatra is the only unsympathetic woman he ever drew, because she is mean and small-spirited, and the deserter in the face of the battle. To me, she has not the nobility of Lady Macbeth, whose chief defect was lack of imagination. It is almost a modern tragedy, this, of the unimaginative woman married to the imaginative man. Lady Macbeth says "the living and the dead are but as pictures." Macbeth, full of imagination, replies: "It is not merely the killing of man, but the flood of visions that would be open to him forever." He is a noble soldierthis is an ignoble deed. She does not understand this, and like all unimaginative people, cannot, of course, realize it: O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, A woman's story at a winter's fire, Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself! Why do you make such faces? When all's done, To kill one man, more or less, seems of no consequence at all, compared to her ambition for her husband's power. But when she sees the bleeding king, dead upon the bed, that reminds her of her father; her eyes show her what her imagination had failed to realize. As she comes back through the curtains, with the dagger dripping with the king's blood, she is a broken woman; from that time forth utterly changed, trying vainly to stem the floodtide she has brought upon herself. She knows she can never again arrest that seething whirlpool of Macbeth's imagination, cannot lay the ghost of the dead king. It is wonderful that after he has ruined all, in the scene where he sees Banquo's ghost (purely with his mind's eye), and all the guests have left and she knows that their power is ruined, she never says one word of reproach to " him. She is tender, and womanly, and loving (a marvelous insight to this tragically ambitious woman), when she says: "You lack the season of all natures, sleep." Her own words show the tumult of her soul: Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content, And then follow Macbeth's terrible words: I have lived long enough. My way of life To me, the play is like an overwhelming Greek tragedy; for you see the power of woman over man-how she can, by her wiles, pull down this great edifice, this brilliant career. Macbeth is spoken of, in the first scene of all, in connection with the king whom he afterwards murders: The king hath happily received, Macbeth, And every one did bear Thy praises in his kingdom's great derence, And pour'd them down before him. Then at the end, through this woman's intrigue, Macbeth says of himself: I have supped full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me. Always with Shakespeare woman is the power behind the throne either for good or evil. That he evidently con sidered her one of the greatest forces of life, is shown in the most extraordinary way in his plays. Cleopatra, when she is cowardly enough to run away in the battle, and Antony is weak enough to follow her-in that moment, struck his deathblow. Had she stood by him, they might have won the battle, and instead of the memory of a great lover, we might have had also that of a great general and ruler-again the woman. That she loved him devotedly, one imagines to be true; but even that did not prevent her trying to steal her jewels from young Octavius Caesar, and trying to get him in her toils, when he came to visit her in the monument. She had a mean and petty soul. But in the last act of all, in the marvelous speech before her death, Shakespeare redeems her: his genius is so supreme, that, in that one speech, he makes us forgive her all her sins: Cleopatra Give me my robe, put on my crown: I have To praise my noble act: I hear him mock The luck of Caesar. Husband, I come: Now to that name my courage prove my title! I am fire and air: my other elements I give to baser life. So, have you done? Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips. The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, If thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world It is not worth leave-taking. Charmian Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain: that I may say |