Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1901-04-13
''Tarre,'


"Buz. bur-
The questions each member must be
prepared to answer next Tuesday are as
fOllows:
= Lawful escials.
when he himself might his quietus
make with a bare bodkin."
Can Hamlet's advice to players be fol-
lowed in this century?
"Of the chameleon's dish"
THE hobby horse"
Leave their tinct.''
Midnights weeds.
Pickers and stealers.
Turn turk.
Miching mallechO.
Operant, shent, fardels, enactives, ORR
sons. patock.
Tristful, rood. ecstasy.
The paper of the evening was read by
MRS. Lydia Lewis as follows:
THE WOMEN OF HAMLET.
Shakespeare, as do all poets, loved
women and loved to portray them: not
with mock sentimentality, lifting them
PbOve humanity as something more than
human and = little less than divine, but
real women, such as walk the common
earth and know the common lot of life.
Women that loved and hated, rejOiced
end sOrrOwed, sinned and repented; that
possessed strength and weakness. vir-
tues and vices, wisdom and folly, veri-
table daughters of men, yet always fem
inine, sufused with the tender glow of
sex, and holding in their hands that
subtle power that Yields. to so great an
extent, for good or ill the destinies of
mankind.
In some of Shakespeare's plays the
ST. of %l,x J,o,, {v 1.nI in1 il,
the characters of his women, in others
his art is employed in delineating the
character of men; the latter he did
in Hamlet. His women are scarcely
Mere than sketched to give an artistic
finish of light and shade to the back
ground of his picture.
Gertrude, who serves as the shadow
to bring out the clearer light of Ophelia,
is perhaps the most unpleasing Of all
of Shakespeare'S women. No longer
young, for her son is grown to manhood,
hot actuated by ambition for she is al
ready a queen before her crime and
nothing more afterwards she connives
at the death of a worthy spouse and
takes to her heart his murderer" with no
apparent motive but a lawless desire for
unbridled license.
That she was privy to the death of
ll@r husband may be inferred from the
fact that she makes no denial of her
Guilt, nor makes no attempt to defend
Or excuse her action when confronted
with her infamy by her son, but on the
contrary all but confesses it when she
says:
80 Hamlet, speak no more!
hou turnest mine eyes into my very
soul;
7 tr,,ai oe n
spots,
AS will not leave their tint
And later:
TO my sick soul, as sins true nature is
Each toy seems prologue to some grea,
amiss
So full of artless jealousy is guilt.
II spells itself in fearing to be split"
So detestable is her character that il
called from her son that renowned ex-
preston: 20 fraility, thy name is wo-
man. which has been used with suct
effect against the sex. being quoted las
Shakespeare says" But Shakespeare
does not say this, he only puts it into
Hamlet's mouth as called forth by the
occasion. Shakespeare often uses his
character to expound his own philosophy
OF life and humanity. and again to depic,
.he emotions and passions of his charac-
latter use. That Shakespeare believed
cutie the contrary in regard to woman
is attested by the fact that many of his
dramas We're written to show woman's
purity and truth, honesty and strength
end how she is unjustly and cruelty sus
picioned, sandered and condemned b!
men: as in Othello, Cymbaline, A Win
ter's Tale and The Merry Wives o
Windsor.
That Gertrude's actions should have
impressed her son with so low an esti
una ton of women is her most terrible
accusation, unhappy is the man WHOSE
1Gother teaches him to despise her SEX
Yet Gertrude is not all depravity, sh'
is still a mother, loves her son and il
anxious on his account even after hi
cutting accusations; treats Ophelia Will
Kindness and mourns at her death We
t:les without any expression of repent
ence.
We turn gladly away from this darl
shadow of life to the fairer personalit.
o. Ophelia.
And Ophelia, what of Ophelia? A
she first appears in the drama she seem
s.. cold colorless. passonless, a shadoy
maiden, without will or thought or feel
Ing, yields without a shadow of protes
to the will of her brother and father il
regard to the Lord Hamlet, and W
WGider if she has any love for him. an
wonder too, if we are young and roman
tic. or ever have been SO. how it is pos
siLle that she should not be. We are hal
angry with her for her meek indiffer
ence to that charming personality. Ham
let, prince of Denmark. 1t is only afte
her interview with him in Act Ill, seen
l. that the vague and shadowy outline
OF her being suddenly take shape an
color whose graceful forms and exqui
sc tints reveals nature sensitive
delicate, pure and true, yet palpitatin
with life that is throbbing with pail
And we begin to love this rare creatur
ana long for clearer calculation of he
nature.
But it is not until in her insanity tbs