Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-05-28
POVERTY AND THE WILL.

POVERTY AND THE WILL. The New Orleans Picayune de clares that no portrait in the long Shakespearean gallery is more ln- stantly recognized as a masterpiece than that of ApothecaIE in the play of Romeo and Juliet. An abject and rathetic figure, the poor man still lives to "point moral" while he at tests the amazing breadth. depth and minuteness of the great dramatist's s study of mankind He holds the stage for just one fatal moment in the play but it would not have been like Shakespeare to dismiss him with a label, single line of colorless de- scription. The mans condition pre- scented to his view moral crisis Of profound significance. and so he mas thought it worth while to paint with a realistic brush the picture of that forlorn brother and his shop. Romeo looking for a short way out of the world says:
 II do remember an Apothecary, and hereabout he dwel's, which late I noted:
 Tn tattered weed, with overwhelmine
 brows,
 Culling of simples; meagre were his
 looks.
 Sharp misery had worn him 10 the bones:
 And in his needy shop tortoise
 hung,
 An alligator stuff'd and other skins Of i]l-shapd fishes and about his
 shelves
 A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and
 musty seeds,
 Remnants of packthread. and old cakes of roses,
 Were thinly scatte1'd to make vp a show '' -" := To this wretch Romeo offers forty e,ucats for q speedy poison. The Apothecary objects that to sell such drugs is punishable by death in l Mantau. and then the unhappy lover 1 makes an argument which proves de cisive:
 Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness
 And fear'st to diea famine is in thy cheeks, .'gt,5'' Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes. =A.'s- Contempt and begsary hang upon thy back, 7, .''i The world is not thy friend nor the l worlds law; 1 The world affords no law. to make the rich: &,s ;: '=~' Then be poor, but break it. and
 take this '.s .='
 The Apothecary's reply is memor ! atle:
 My poverty, but not my will, con sents." " .' And very pithily does Romeo say: 'l sell thee poison; thou hast solo me none - =t=,=. Lovers and other romantic people dismissins the Apothecary as a quite 1 subordinate factor in the play, ma. turn from this fatefal scene withou fully grasring the fact that 1t ha. 1 brought before them two contraste< phases of tragic failure. But. il l truth. it would be difficult, to de eide whether the starving Apothe cary or the rich and hobly-borl Romeo is the more to be commis e1ated. Romeo trouble is. after HI largely a matter of temperament Many man has cherished as grea a love and bravely endured its he reavement. The Apothecary ha known better days, no doubt, but h has passed through a long and tel
 rible struggle and he has been dt
 feated. He may well have been
 loving student of nature. aGduai1te
 With the science of his time. an
 oivea to high thought as he wen
 about with overwhelming brow
 e;'lling of simples." At all events
 there is something suggestive of q
 irtonse and inauiring spirit in th
 words. It may be that he had give
 orn thought to learning than {
 thrift. though it seems that he ha ondeavored so to arrange his scaHt
 eteck as "ta Colzn up q show" On
 iwasines him peering through
 half-opened door when Romeo sun moned him to the front; for it WI