TUB SNARE OF SIN

Evening Star, Issue 15515, 10 June 1914, Page 9

TUB SNARE OF SIN

LECTURE ON ? MACBETH.’ The Rev.- A. Wynne Thomas, of Swansea. who is at present filling the pulpit of Knox Church, lectured in Knox Church School Hall last night cm Shakespeare’s tragedy of ‘Macbeth,’ and his suggestive method of treating the play was so scholarly and penetrating as to give fresh charm to an old subject, and to intrigue tho interest of every unit of his big audienge. Mr ThCuna's lias most obviously studied the dramatist with constant and affectionate zeal, and. Iris analysis of this poignant tragedy in its theatric as well as its moral issue was little short of masterly, when one considers how circumscribed the lecturer’s method was by considerations of time. Mr Thomas made very effective use of the tremendous dramatic contrasts that constitute one of the chief charms of the tragedy to point his moral and adorn his impressive tale. And tho first great_truth ho expounded was that, while evil is not inevitable, its consequences are incalculable and uncontrollable; that in trafficking with evil man or woman is dealing with a thing whose nature cannot bo understood, and whose end cannot be foreseen. The blood of Duncan, of which Lady Macbeth says " a little water clears us of this deed,” in the end “the multitudinous seas incarnadines.” For Banquo must follow the same fatal path, with Macduff's wife and babies. Murder breeds murder, and with all this bloody bolstering of usurped power, the end foretold by tho witches cannot bo abated a jot. Macbeth and his wife perish miserably, and Bauquo's sons inherit. The theory of a Macbeth drifting, a helpless, faltering creature caught in the current of Fate, the lecturer wholly disavowed, urging that, whatever is concealed in the womb of time, man has the highest God-given power to choose the righteous path, and to go down fighting. And this brings us to the first great contrast sketched by Mr Thomas, whose issue indubitably confirms the above diagnosis. Both Banquo and Macbeth were parties to tho witches’ prophecy, but Banquo remained unsullied by temptation, while Macbeth, egged mi by the malign influence of his wife and by perturbed ambition, becomes entangled in tho snares of Hell. Tho second groat point which the lecturer made by apposite quotation and narrative was that of the use made by the dramatist of the functions of sleep, and their derangement., to heighten tho awe and horror of his tragedy. Duncan was murdered in sleep, and. cries Macbeth, in terror: “ Methought I heard a voice cry: ‘Sleep no more. Macbeth dot?i murder sleep.’” Lady Macbeth is frankly impatient of this weakness. “ Braiusickly things” is her scornful commentary, and vet, said Mr Thomas, Lady Macbeth, unable to sense the horror in her waking moments, is doomed presently, in tho wiki delirium of sleep, to reveal it to everybody. Here, indeed, is a dreadful Nemesis, recalling that magnificent phrase in which Do Qtuncey speaks of a horror being " swept out of his sight and into Ilia dreams for ever.” Yet one more pregnant contrast ore we are regretfully done with Mr Thomas. Immediately alter the deed Lady Macbeth reassures tho fearful Macbeth with. “What's done is done!” But later, when horror has sapped her resolution, it is; “ What’s done cannot be undone.” In the first is enshrined the hope, and in tho second the despair, of every sinner. One is conscious of having failed to reproduce the charm of Mr Thomas’s lecture, but the above may in some sort indicate its suggestive character. Mr G. -I. Thomson, M. I’., expressed only the exact feeling of the audience in the eulogy no delivered by way of vote of thanks.