Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/62

50 is it that is speaking to me?’ And the girl, shuddering (for it is hateful to a ghost to name itself), answers: ‘Hazukashi ya! I am the soul of the Duke Ferdinand’s sister, she that was once called Duchess of Malfi. Love still ties my soul to the earth. Pray for me, oh, pray for my release!’

“Here closes the first part of the play. In the second the young ghost, her memory quickened by the Pilgrim’s prayers … endures again the memory of her final hours. She mimes the action of kissing the hand, finds it very cold. And each successive scene of the torture is so vividly mimed that though it exists only in the Protagonist’s brain, it is as real to the audience as if the figure of dead Antonio lay propped upon the stage, or as if the madmen were actually leaping and screaming before them. Finally she acts the scene of her own execution:

“The chorus, taking up the word ‘quiet’, chant a phrase from the Lotus Sutra, ‘In the Three Worlds there is no quietness or rest’. But the Pilgrim’s prayers have been answered. Her soul has broken its bonds; is free to depart. The ghost recedes, grows dimmer and dimmer till at last it vanishes from sight.”