File:Richard Mansfield as Arthur Dimmesdale.jpg

Identifier: lifeartofrichard02wint (find matches)
Title: Life and art of Richard Mansfield : with selections from his letters
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Winter, William, 1836-1917
Subjects: Mansfield, Richard, 1857-1907
Publisher: New York : Moffat, Yard and company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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ife of the elderlyscholar, who had been believed to be dead. Thoselovers, under irresistible temptation, have falleninto sin, and for that error they have dreadfullysuffered. The woman has been disgraced, and theman has languished beneath the puissant malice ofthe revengeful husband, who has lived with himas a friend and has insidiously striven to torturehim to madness. At length the lovers resolve to flyfrom their doom of torment and dwell together inpeace, but their purpose is discovered and baffled.Then the minister publicly confesses his guilt, andexpires, in anguish, while the wife and husband, ir-revocably parted, remain, to suffer. That is the gistof the play. Sympathy, of course, goes with the un-happy woman. She had been wrongly wedded.She had been long parted from her obnoxious hus-band. She had lost her heart, and she had naturally,though sinfully, followed where it went. She wasbranded with ignominy and devoted to a life of la-borious expiation. Furthermore her environment
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MAXSFIELD AS ARTHUR DIMMESDALE DIMMESDALE 101 was that of colonial New England, in a time of merci-less bigotry. Every wrong act is succeeded, sooner or later, by itscommensurate punishment. Penalty follows crime.If the offense be committed against the laws ofsociety, those laws will punish the offender,—ifthey reach him. If the sin be committed against thesoul, it is registered in the memory, and it becomes aperpetual torture. Truths of that order make theethical basis of The Scarlet Letter and they areinculcated by it. A portrayal of spiritual strugglesand sufferings, under weird and darkly picturesqueconditions, was the authors object, when he told thatstory and declared those truths. That portrayal, inthe narrative, is vitalized by grim, ghastly specula-tion, and by numberless acute touches of detail, andalso it is enhanced by a fantastic play of fancy,—aswhen the rank weeds that are seen growing upon agrave are denoted as symbols of unacknowledged sinsof the poor inhabitant m

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