CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 11050, 31 August 1896, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

It says something for the A originality of a critic when shaksperia n he can address a. Shakcrxticism. sperian Society at length and mate his remarks interesting without going over ground which has been covered a hundred times beforehand. Mr A. Wilson, President of the Dunedin Shabspere Club, performed this task in addressing the members of that society on Friday night, and if he said nothing absolutely new—an impossible task under the circumstances—he put forward in lucid style the impressions of an independent student of the poet’s work, and dwelt on one or two points which are apt to ha overlooked. Mr Wilson thinks that “ there is no direction in which Shakspere criticism has been more gratuitously overdone than in the estimate formed of Shakspere’s women characters, more particularly those estimates formed by women,” Mrs Jameson’s “Characteristics” seems to Mr Wilson to be “ painfully overstrained,” and of the recent volume of Shakspere papers by Lady Martin he is of opinion that their chief value consists in throwing “a great deal of amiable light on the character of Lady Martin herself.” The writer’s analysis of Beatrice, in particular, ho considers “ridiculously exaggerated.” Mr Wilson, however, refuses to go to any great length in his criticisms of the poet as a delineator of woman’s character. lie thinks it would be Leso-majestic to say that Shakspere’s perspicacity in respect of women, as of men, was not greater than that of writers who have undertaken a more ambitious programme. It seems to us that, while on this head, Mr Wilson might have gone a great deal further. The Elizabethan drama subordinated the woman character to the demands of imposing climax; the tendency was to introduce the woman solely because love had to bo represented on the stage. To say that Shakspere was superior to his age in his view of the proper sphere of woman is to say something which does not appear to us to be justified by his works. Shakspere, of course, had the artist’s temperament and the lover’s ; he could delineate passion either in man or

woman, but even Eosalind, probably his most complex female character, is a pencil drawing compared with the counterfeit presentment of such types as Hamlet and Lear, A Maggie Tulliver or a Gwendoline Harleth were impossible to the literary age of Elizabeth, although Shaksperiau students have made out of his heroines as complex studies as either of these.

A report that has been going the round of the English newspapers with

A HOEEIBLE HANGING.

regard to the triple execution of the men Fowler, Seaman and Milsom has revived the discussion as to whether or not the representatives of the Press should be allowed to witness the infliction of capital punishment. On this particular occasion the proceedings were '•'strictly private.” No reporters were admitted, and the usual subsequent inquiries at the gaol were met by a tolerably circumstantial account of the dread ceremony and an absolute assurance that “everything passed off satisfactorily.” According, however, to a detailed and horrible story published in Lloyd’s, there was a very serious and a very sensational bungle. “The execution was,” says that Journal, “ carried out in the presence of Mr Under-Sheriff Metcalfe, acting for the high sheriff of the County of London, Mr Under - Sheriff Euston and certain gaol officials. Billington was the hangman, having as his assist-

ant Wilkinson, of Bolton. The chaplain reading the burial service, reached the solemn word’s * In the midst of life we are in death/ at the exact moment that the assistant was strapping the legs of Milsom. The words quoted are usually the notification to the sheriffs to give the signal for death, and ignorant, or careless of the fact that the

preparations were not quite complete, they gave it. Wilkinson’s hands were still busy with the straps about Milsom’s feet as Billingfcon pulled the lever, and convict and assistant hangman fell through the trap together. Then ensued a horrible scene. Shooting head foremost down, Wilkinson, to save his own neck, for the full depth of the pit is over 20ft, clung to the legs of the unhappy culprit, and swung these with him. The stooping attitude of the assistant naturally threw him forward as he clung to Milsom’s legs, so that the latter did not get a direct drop, and the first impact of the noose came upon the back of the neck instead of slightly forward, as it should do to ensure instantaneous death* Milsom was duly hanged, but it was a death, of minutes, not seconds, as iu the case of his companions. This gruesome story has met with a somewhat vague denial, it being asserted that though Wilkinson did fall into the pit he did not catch hold of Milsom’s legs; but there is a very general suspicion that it is substantially correct. If representatives of the Press had been present there would have been no room for doubt, and this fact has led many newspaper correspondents to urge that iu the interest of the criminals as well as in the interests of public decency reporters should be allowed to witness all executions.

The passage through tha House of Lords of the Earl of Dunraven’s Bill to legalise marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, appears, from the newspaper accounts of the proceed-

MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED wife’s SISTER.

ings, to have aroused at various stages a good deal of heated feeling. While the measure was in committee our late visitor, the Bishop of Salisbury, moved that no man who had intrigued with his wife’s sister while his wife was alive should be permitted to marry her after his wife’s death. The Marquis of Salisbury, forgetting for the moment, it may be hoped, that he was the Prime Minister, “ sympathised with the Bishop, but thought his proposal would defeat his own object. It would remove the only penalty of which tha licentious man was afraid —that of having to marry his victim.” This, the Daily Nows observes, is rather in the style of the late Guy de Maupassant than of a model Tory and High Churchman. After such an example, it cannot have surprised anyone to find Lord Clifden asserting that “the bishops wanted a certain number of women to live in sin,” or the Bishop of Salisbury imputing to Lord Davey something like sympathy with free love. The Chairman, Lord Hersehell, denounced in unmistakable terms, this piece of episcopal indecorum. To suggest that either the Bill or its promoters made light of misconduct between men and their sisters-in-law was, he said, to suggest something as far from the truth as could be conceived. The Bill would not make such misconduct one whit more likely than before, but it would remove a great hardship and injustice. Earl Percy’s contribution towards the debate is rather a curiosity in its way. “The measure had passed through, the House of Commons on several occasions,” he is reported to have said, “and had been before the country for forty years at least. That being the case, would their lordships, or could they, resist tha Bill any longer if there were really any large desire for it outside? He hardly thought it was quite respectful to their lordships that year after year this measure should be brought before them when they had so often rejected it.” The concluding sentence is delicious. To any ordinarily constituted mind it would appear that when a Bill had been passed by the representatives of the people on “ several occasions,” and had been “before the country for forty years at least,” it would not be “ quite respectful n to the nation to continue to reject the measure. But Earl Percy is not ashamed, even at this end of the nineteenth century, to express an exactly opposite view.