It is not worth the living; for what power has man against the
fiends? But at this point arises a further question to demand solution:
what shall be hereafter? If evil is supreme here, shall it not be so in
that undiscovered country,--that life to come? The dreams that may come
give him pause, and he either shuffles on, doubting, hesitating, and
incapable of decision, or he hurls himself wildly against his fate. In
either case his life becomes like to a tale
"Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying--nothing!"
125. It is strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism
upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds
force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world
around. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Othello" give place to "Lear,"
"Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Timon." So true is
it that "unfaith in aught is want of faith in all," that in these later
plays it would seem that honour, honesty, and justice were virtues not
possessed by man or woman; or, if possessed, were only a curse to bring
down disgrace and destruction upon the possessor. Contrast the women of
these plays with those of the comedies immediately preceding the Hamlet
period. In the latter plays we find the heroines, by their sweet womanly
guidance and gentle but firm control, triumphantly bringing good out of
evil in spite of adverse circumstance.
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