Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/268

232 adultery through its being the cause of their death? This would be turning the poets upside down for they, and Shakespeare above all, are in love with the passions themselves, and no less with their yearnings for death— when the heart does not cling to life more firmly than the drop of water does to the glass. It is not so much guilt and its evil consequences which they—Shakespeare as well as Sophocles (in Ajax, Philoctetes Œdipus)—wish to portray; however easy it might have been in the aforesaid cases to make guilt the lever of the play, they carefully refrained from so doing. Neither is it the wish of the tragic poet to prejudice us against life by means of his representations of life. Nay, he exclaims: “It is the charm of charms, this exciting, variable, hazardous, gloomy and often sun-steeped existence! It is an adventure to live!— with whatever party you side in life, it will ever retain this character." Thus he speaks in a restless and vigorous age, which is partly intoxicated and dazed by its superabundance of blood and energy—ill an age more evil than ours: wherefore we must needs begin by adapting and accommodating the purpose of a Shake- sperian play—that is, by not understanding it. —If what is now most positively asserted is true, that the cause of the black pigment of the skin is not attributable to the effect of light, could it perhaps be the final outcome of frequent passions,