Page:Such Is Life.djvu/83

Rh will notice that, up to a certain point of time, the Prince governs his own destiny—at least, as far as the Ghost's commission is concerned, and this covers the whole drama. He is master and umpire of his circumstances, so that when two or more lines of action, or a line of action and a line of inaction, appear equally efficacious, he can select the one which appears to be of least resistance. But subsequent to that point of time, he is no longer the arbiter of his own situation, but rather the puppet of circumstances. There are no more divergent roads; if he desires to leave the one he has chosen, he must break blindly through a hedge of moral antagonisms. His alternatives have become so lopsided that practically there is only one course open. The initial exercise of judgment was not merely an antecedent to later developments of the plot; it was a Rubicon-crossing, which has committed the hero to a system of interlaced contingencies; and the tendency of this system bears him away, half-conscious of his own impotence, to where the rest is silence. The turning-point is where Hamlet engages the Players to enact the Murder of Gonzago.

A major-alternative may create and enclose all the secondary alternatives of after life. A minor-alternative may exhaust itself in one minute, or less, leaving its indelible, though imperceptible, scar on the experimenter, and, through him, on the world in which he lives. The major-alternative is the Shakespearian "tide in the affairs of men," often recognised, though not formulated. In any case, each alternative brings into immediate play a flash of Free-will, pure and simple, which instantly gives place—as far as that particular section of life is concerned—to the dominion of what we call Destiny. The two should never be confounded. "Who can control his fate?" asks the ruined Othello. No one, indeed. But every one controls his option, chooses his alternative. Othello himself had independently evolved the decision which fixed his fate, recognising it as such an alternative. Thus:—

Also he perceives that it is a major-alternative which confronts him; and he contrasts this with the supposititious minor-alternative of extinguishing the lamp. But how often do we accept a major-alternative, whilst innocently oblivious to its gravity!

In Macbeth, the alternatives are very obvious. The interest of the play centres on the poise of incentive between action and non-action, and the absolute free-will of election. But that election once made, we see—and the hero himself acknowledges—a practical inevitableness in all succeeding atrocities which mark his career as king.

Such momentous alternatives are simply the voluntary rough-hewing