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 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A 
 COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
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 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013138353 
 
FECHTER 
 
THE STAGE HISTORY OF FAMOUS FLA VS. 
 
 HAMIvKT 
 
 From tie Actors' StanJpoint. 
 
 ITS REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 Comparison of Their Performances. 
 
 'by henry p. PH ELF'S ,""""% 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PLAYERS OF A CENTURY,'" '"(, \ 
 
 
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 NEW YORK: ' l\J)i (> '\.'^'" 
 
 EDGAR S. WERNER. if/lll! l>''^'^ 
 
 189°- (; Ok i : , I i 
 
 "Ij.kkAlvV;:,: 
 
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 Copyright, 
 
 1890, 
 
 By H. p. Phelps. 
 
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 >■ Vi A )1 HJ.I 
 
 f><Li-i^-''- 1 
 
 r 
 
TO THE 
 
 IN THE CLOSET AND ON BOTH SIDES THE 
 
 FOOT-LIGHTS, THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
His was the spell o'er hsarts 
 
 Ulhich only /I c ting lends,— 
 The youngest of the Sister Mrts, 
 
 Where all their beautg blends i 
 For ill can Poetry express 
 
 Full many a tone of thought sublims, 
 Rnd Painting, mute and motionless, 
 
 Steals but a glance of Time. 
 But by the mighty Motor brought, 
 
 Illusion's perfect triumphs came, — 
 I/arse ceases to be airy thought, 
 
 Hnd Sculpture- to be dumb, 
 
 [Thomas Campbell's " Valedictory Stanzas to J. P. Kemble,' 
 composed for a Public Meeting held June, 1S17. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 // may be thought unnecessary, and, perhaps, presump- 
 tuous, to add in the slightest degree to the mass of litera- 
 ture that, for nearly^ two hu?idred years, and in many 
 languages, has been accumulating around the play and 
 the character of Hamlet. The writer, however, does not 
 profess to advance any new theories, nor to sit in judg- 
 m.ent upon old ones ; neither does he ask to be credited 
 •with anything more thaji for the first time bringing 
 together from many sources and in a comparative form, 
 the ideas, as expressed in their several performances, of 
 the stage Hamlets themselves — the men of all men who 
 have given the subject most consideration, and to whom. 
 the world owes the most illuminating commentaries the 
 ^t eat poem has ever had. 
 
 The writer is well aware that by the consideration of 
 each scene separately, the actor's conception, taken as a 
 whole and regarded from the philosophic, theoretical and 
 {Esthetic stand-points, is lost sight of; but if there is little of 
 that treatment to be found here, it is not lacking elsewhere. 
 The object has been rather to focus the combined ifitelli- 
 gence of stage-artists upon the great passages of the play 
 than to set forth the views or merits of itny individual 
 actor. 
 
 The authorities cited may appear, in some instances, to 
 contradict one another, but this can be accounted for from 
 the fact that many actors are constantly changing their 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 representations as experience or fancy dictates, and so from 
 year to year, their performances differ and are differently 
 described. 
 
 These notes are preceded by an account of the most illus- 
 trious Hamlets known to the stage, and here the writer has 
 been compelled to follow in the steps of Mr. Austin Brere- 
 ton, whose " Some Famous Hamlets" appeared in London 
 some time after this part of the present work was begun. 
 
 If this experiment in dealing with the stage history and 
 aspect of Hamlet meets with the approval of those whom 
 it is intended to interest, other plays may receive similar 
 treatment at the Jiands of the writer, who, as one of the 
 toilers of the Press, has made long and diligent search 
 among theatrical annals for the information which it is 
 proposed to embody in a " Stage History of Famous 
 Plays," of which this may be considered the first volume. 
 
 To those already deeply learned in dramatic lore it is 
 scarcely to be expected that such a series will present other 
 merit than that of convenience, inasmuch as it must, of 
 necessity, be largely a compilation of matter already in 
 print, although widely scattered and not easily attain- 
 able ; but to the many who have yet something to learn, 
 actors, professional and amateur, students of Shakspeare 
 and the drama generally, as well as the great unclassi- 
 fied public for whom " The Play " has an abiding interest, 
 it is hoped this volume, and those which may succeed it, 
 will prove both entertaining and instructive. 
 
 H. P. Phelps. 
 Brookside Avenue, ■• 
 
 Menands, Albany, N. Y., 
 
 Oct. I, 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Hamlets of the Stage. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Richard Burbage 3 
 
 Thomas Betterton 5 
 
 David Garrick 6 
 
 George Frederick Cooke 9 
 
 John Philip Kemble .-. 10 
 
 Charles Kemble u 
 
 Edmund Kean „ 12 
 
 Junius Brutus Booth 15 
 
 Charles Kean 16 
 
 William C. Macready 18 
 
 Edwin Forrest 22 
 
 Charles Fechter 22 
 
 Edwin Booth 29 
 
 Tommaso Salvini 43 
 
 Henry Irving 44 
 
 Wilson Barrett 47 
 
 Ernesto Rossi 48 
 
 And Others 51 
 
 Hamlet on the French Stage 55 
 
 A Comparison of Different Performances of Hamlet. 
 
 Act First, Scene First 65 
 
 The Court-Scene 65 
 
 Hamlet's First Soliloquy 70 
 
 Enter Horatio, Bernardo and^Marcellus 72 
 
 The Scenes with the Ghost 77 
 
 Act Second, Polonius 94 
 
 Ophelia 96 
 
 Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 98 
 
 The Scene with the Players 100 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Soliloquy Closing the Second Act 103 
 
 Act Third— " To be, or Not to be" lo6 
 
 Hamlet and Ophelia "2 
 
 Instructions to the Players ■ '21 
 
 The Play-Scene 122 
 
 After the Play 129 
 
 The King in his Closet 131 
 
 The Scene with the Queen-Mother 132 
 
 Act Fourth, Ophelia's Madness 15° 
 
 Act Fifth, The Churchyard- Scene 152 
 
 Scene with Osric 157 
 
 The Last Scene 157 
 
 Hamlet as an Opera 164 
 
 The Songs and Music of Hamlet 165 
 
 The Quarto Hamlet 167 
 
 Great Casts of Haml^. 168 
 
 List of Authorities Quoted 169 
 
 Index 171 
 
THE HAMLETS OF THE STAGE. 
 
HAMLET 
 
 " From the first performance of Hamlet to the present 
 day, we may reasonably conclude that no dramatic 
 piece whatever has laid hold on the public affection 
 so strongly and been acted so frequently." 
 
 So wrote Tom Davies in 1784, and the record of the 
 last hundred years serves rather to strengthen than to 
 modify the opinion. No play in any literature has such 
 a stage history. First acted in 1602, it has held the 
 boards for nearly three centuries, saving only such 
 intervals as when there were no theatres, or when the 
 works of Shakspeare were lost sight of altogether. 
 Since the days of Burbage before the Restoration and 
 of Betterton after it, Hamlet has been played by more 
 actors, and has had longer uninterrupted runs than any 
 other of the legitimate dramas. Its title role is one to 
 which all tragedians aspire ; it is one in which failure is 
 well-nigh impossible; and the play to-day, notwith- 
 standing its metaphysical character, remains as fresh in 
 interest and as popular with all classes as ever. It is 
 no daring prophecy to assert that as long as the. English 
 language is spoken and the English drama finds repre- 
 sentation at all, so long will Hamlet be made a source 
 of pleasure to the spectator, a pathway of fame to the 
 actor, and a mine of revenue to the theatrical treasury. 
 
 Richard Burbage (i 566-1619) was the first of the 
 long, unended line of Hamlets. " King Dick," as his 
 
4 HAMLET. 
 
 fellow actors called him, because of his greater fame as 
 
 Richard III., was short and stout, to which is attributed 
 
 the reason why Shakspeare made Hamlet " fat and 
 
 scant of breath." How he played or even dressgd the 
 
 part, no one knows. Not one word written during his 
 
 lifetime descriptive of him as an actor has come down 
 
 to us, although after his death, this tribute among others 
 
 was paid to his memory : 
 
 " He's gone, anil with him what a world are dead. 
 Friends every one, and what a blank instead ; 
 Take him for all in all, he was a man 
 Not to be matched, and no age ever can. 
 No more young Hamlet, though but scant of breath 
 Shall cry ' Revenge ' for his dear father's death. 
 Oft have I seen him leap into the grave 
 Suiting the person which he seemed to have 
 Of the mad lover with so true an eye 
 That there I would have sworn he meant to die." 
 
 It has been claimed that Joseph Taylor and John 
 
 Lowin, both members of the Globe Company in Shaks- 
 
 peare's time, played Hamlet, and both have been called 
 
 the original Hamlet, the latter by Schlegel and Payne 
 
 Collier ; the former by Davies. Downes, in his " Roscius 
 
 Anglicanus," says : 
 
 " Sir William Davenant having seen Mr. Taylor, of the 
 Black-Frier's Playhouse, act this part (who was instructed 
 by the author Shakspeare), remembered him so well 
 that he taught Mr. Betterton in every. article; which, by 
 his exact performance, gained the actor esteem and 
 reputation." 
 
 Mr. Austin Brereton, who for his " Some Famous 
 Hamlets" (1884), investigated the matter carefully, 
 concludes that " there is no record whatever of Lowin 
 having even so much as appeared in the character. 
 Taylor certainly acted Hamlet, but he did so after 
 Burbage." 
 
HAMLET. 5 
 
 ^fejcrmas ^ett«Kt)cnx. 
 Of Thomas Betterton (1635-1710), the second great 
 Hamlet, there is more definite knowledge. Pepys re- 
 cords in his diary : 
 
 "May 28, 1663 — To the Duke's house, and there saw 
 Hamlet done, giving us fresh reason never to think 
 enough of Betterton. 
 
 "Aug. 31, 1668 — To the Duke of York's play-house, 
 and there saw Hamlet, which we have not seen this year 
 before, or more ; and mightily pleased with it, but above 
 all with Betterton, the best part, I believe, that ever 
 man acted." 
 
 When we consider the rather light estimate in which 
 this amusing old critic held the plays and characters of 
 Shakspeare, this is praise indeed. Betterton first played 
 Hamlet when he was twenty-six years old. The Ophelia 
 was Mistress Sanderson, said by some authorities to 
 have been the first woman actress on the English stage. 
 With her he was in love, and soon afterward they were 
 married. At first he played Hamlet in the dress of a 
 courtier of Charles H., and later with streaming shoulder- 
 knots, cocked hat and powdered wig. 
 
 It was Betterton who, when manager, and annoyed at 
 one of the early performances of Colley Gibber, ordered 
 five shillings to be deducted from his pay, but learning 
 that he received no salary, still maintained discipline by 
 putting him on the pay-roll at ten shillings a week and 
 fining him five for punishment. Gibber and Addison 
 were loud in his praise as an actor. Yet it was written 
 of him (by Anthony Aston) that he "had an ill figure, 
 large head,- short, thick neck, stooped shoulders and 
 long arms. He had little eyes, broad face, a little 
 
6 HAMLET. 
 
 pock-marked, corpulent body, thick legs, and large 
 feet. His voice, low and grumbling, yet he could tune 
 it by an artful climax which enforced universal attention, 
 even from the fops and orange girls." 
 
 Surely, this is hardly the glass of fashion and the 
 mould of form, but the description, if ever it approached 
 truth, did so only in his old age, for he was on the stage 
 fifty years. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Robert Wilks (1670-1732) won some reputation as 
 Hamlet. CoUey Gibber tells us that when in company 
 with Mr. Addison they were both surprised at the voci- 
 ferous manner in which Wilks spoke to the Ghost. This 
 was greatly censured by them both. Barton Booth, one 
 day at rehearsal, reproached Wilks for this : "I thought," 
 said he, " Bob, that last night you wanted to play fisty 
 cuffs with me ; you bullied that which you ought to have 
 revered. When I acted the Ghost with Betterton, in- 
 stead of my awing him, he terrified me. But divinity 
 hung about that man." To this rebuke Wilks, with his 
 usual modesty, repHed : " Mr. Betterton and Mr. Booth 
 could always act as they pleased ; he, for his part, must 
 do as well as he could." 
 
 David Garrick (i 716-1779) first played Hamlet at 
 Dublin in 1 742, with Peg Woffington as Ophelia. Strange 
 as it may seem, some who had seen Betterton in their 
 younger days, were willing to admit that the new Hamlet 
 was his superior in that character. The passages in 
 which he was most effective are elsewhere noted. 
 
 Like some other great actors and managers, Garrick 
 attempted to improve on Shakspeare. The first act of 
 
HAMLET. 7 
 
 Hamlet he thought too long, and so ended it with 
 Hamlet's expressed determination to watch for the 
 Ghost. The third act was extended to the fourth. But 
 little change was made in the language or scenery till 
 the fifth act, in which Laertes arrives and Ophelia is dis- 
 tracted, as in the original. The plotting scenes between 
 the King and Laertes to destroy Hamlet were entirely 
 changed, and the character of Laertes rendered more 
 estimable. Hamlet, having escaped from Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern, returns with a firm determination to 
 avenge the death of his father. The grave-diggers 
 were absolutely thrown out of the play. The audience 
 were not informed of the death of Ophelia, and the_ 
 Queen, instead of being poisoned on the stage, was led 
 from her seat and said to be in a state of insanity, 
 owing to her sense of guilt. When Hamlet attacks the 
 King, the King draws his sword, and defends himself, 
 and is killed in the rencounter. Laertes and Hamlet 
 die of their mutual wounds. 
 
 Garrick contended that, according to Shakspeare, 
 the King was stuck like a pig on the stage, whereas by 
 giving the murderer courage he did not lessen the 
 meanness of his character. But, says Davies, the spec- 
 tators would not part with their old friends, the grave- 
 diggers, and soon called for Hamlet as it had been 
 acted before. 
 
 Biographia Dramatica : " Hamlet. Altered by 
 Mr. Garrick. Acted at Drury Lane, 1771. This alter- 
 ation was made in the true spirit of Bottom the Weaver, 
 who wishes to play not only the part assigned him, but 
 all the rest in the piece. Mr. Garrick, in short, had 
 reduced the consequence of every character but that 
 
8 HAMLET. 
 
 represented by himself ; and thus excluding Osric, the 
 grave-diggers, etc., contrived to monopolize the atten- 
 tion of the audience. Our poet had furnished Laertes, 
 with a dying address, which afforded him a local advan- 
 tage over the Prince of Denmark. This circumstance 
 was no sooner observed than the speech was taken 
 away from the former and adopted by the latter. After 
 the death of the player, the public indeed vindicated 
 the rights of the poet, by starving the theatres into 
 compliance with their wishes to see Hamlet as originally 
 meant for exhibition. Mr. Garrick had once designed 
 to publish the changes he had made in it, and (as was. 
 usual with him in the course of similar transactions) 
 had accepted a compliment from the booksellers, con- 
 sisting of a set of Olivet's edition of Tully; but, on 
 second thought, with a laudable regard to his future 
 credit, he returned the acknowledgment, and suppressed 
 the alterations. In short, no bribe but his own inimit- 
 able performance, could have prevailed on an English 
 audience to sit patiently and behold the martyrdom of 
 their favorite author." 
 
 A story was at one time in circulation that Garrick's 
 copy of these alterations was buried with him, but Mr. 
 Kemble had in his library what Boaden believed to be 
 the very copy of the play upon which these alterations 
 were made. 
 
 Boaden thus describes them : 
 
 " He cut out the voyage to England, and the execu- 
 tion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; he omitted the 
 funeral of Ophelia, and all the wisdom of the Prince and 
 the rude jocularity of the grave-diggers. Hamlet bursts- 
 in upon the King and his court, and Laertes reproaches- 
 him with his father's and his sister's deaths. The ex- 
 asperation of both is at its height, when the King inter- 
 poses ; he had commanded Hamlet to depart for Eng- 
 land, and declares that he will no longer bear this. 
 
HAMLET. 9 
 
 rebellious conduct, but that his wrath shall at length fall 
 heavy upon the Prince. ' First,' exclaims Hamlet, 
 ' feel you mine ; ' and he instantly stabs him. The 
 Queen rushes out imploring the attendants to save her 
 from her son. Laertes, seeing treason and murder be- 
 fore him, attacks Hamlet to avenge his father, his sister 
 and his King. He wounds Hamlet mortally, and Horatio 
 is on the point of making Laertes accompany him to 
 the shades when the Prince commands him to desist, as- 
 suring him that it was the hand of heaven, which ad- 
 ministered by Laertes, that precious balm for all his 
 wounds. We then learn that the miserable mother has 
 dropped in a trance ere she could reach her chamber- 
 door, and Hamlet implores for her an hour of penitence 
 ere madness ends her. He then joins the hands of Laertes 
 and Horatio, and commands them to unite their virtues 
 (as a coalition of ministers) to ' calm the troubled land.' 
 The old couplet as to the bodies concludes the play. 
 All this is written in a mean and trashy common-place 
 manner, and, in a word, sullied the page of Shakspeare, 
 and disgraced the taste and judgment of Garrick." 
 
 George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) attempted 
 Hamlet for the first time in London, September 27, 1802, 
 and failed. He says himself : 
 
 " On Monday, the 27th, I acted Hamlet to a very 
 numerous audience. Next day the newspapers, some 
 of whom I believe were prepared for the business, at- 
 tacked me in a manner that would have been deemed 
 impossible to have happened to any one who had ever 
 received the slightest approbation from an audience — a 
 London one, I mean. I repeated it once, but never 
 since [written in 1807]. I do not doubt but I had faults 
 in abundance, but had I acted it as well as I had seen 
 it acted by Garrick, my reception in that character 
 
lo HAMLET. 
 
 would have been much the same. I believe the second 
 night was worse than the first, and the cause is too 
 obvious to mention." 
 
 Dunlap, his biographer, adds : 
 
 " Mr. Kemble was at this time absent from England, 
 and he was, in the opinion of the greater part of the 
 public, the only possible representative of Hamlet. 
 Now Hamlet was looked upon as Mr. Kemble's prop- 
 erty ; and it would be felt, if not thought dishonest, to 
 seize it in his absence. It was like taking possession of 
 a man's house while he was making a journey. Under 
 these circumstances, it was an ill-judged attempt of Mr. 
 Harris, and must have failed, even if Mr. Cooke had 
 been much better qualified by nature and habit for the 
 part than he was. That Mr. Cooke was not at this time 
 qualified to contend for the character of Hamlet, I am 
 -assured, though I may be wrong to ascribe the cause to 
 any natural deficiency. Had Cooke become the favor- 
 ite of the London audience in 1780, instead of 1800 — 
 at the age of 25, instead of 45 — had he been free from 
 the habits which twenty years of low society had ' buck- 
 led upon him,' we might have seen in him a Hamlet 
 though essentially different, not inferior to Kemble's, or 
 to Garrick's." 
 
 John Philip Kemble (1757-1823) played Hamlet on 
 his first appearance at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783. 
 He discarded the Garrick version, the bills announcing 
 the play as originally written by Shakspeare. Boaden, 
 his biographer, says his Hamlet was decidedly original. 
 He had seen no great actor whom he could have copied. 
 The criticisms that he evoke from what were called "new 
 readings " were many. It is admitted that he was nat- 
 

 JOHN P. KEMBLE. 
 
HAMLET. II 
 
 urally slow and contemplative, and his utterances tardy. 
 It was said by some that his pauses were too long; but 
 all agreed that he was far removed from being common- 
 place. One critic said he was " too scrupulously grace- 
 ful." Points wherein he differed from Garrick and 
 from Henderson have been carefully noted by Boaden, 
 as will be seen elsewhere. 
 
 Mr. Kemble played the part in a modern court dress 
 of rich dark velvet with a star on the breast, the garter 
 and pendant ribbon of an order, mourning sword and 
 buckles, with deep ruffles ; the hair in powder, which in 
 scenes of feigned distraction flowed disheveled in front 
 and over his shoulders. 
 
 His brother Stephen (1758-1822), " the big Kemble," 
 as he was called to distinguish him from the great 
 Kemble, also played the part quite frequently, the more 
 so, perhaps, because his wife was such a charming 
 Ophelia. He dressed the character in an old-fashioned 
 black coat, breeches, vest, buckle-shoes and a flowing 
 auburn wig. 
 
 ®Iia«Xjes %zvct\Az. 
 
 Charles Kemble (1775-1854), the brother of John 
 Kemble and the father of Fanny Kemble, although 
 more especially noted for excellence in secondary 
 characters, played Hamlet not infrequently. He main- 
 tained, and his daughter agreed with him, that Hamlet 
 was really mad. 
 
 Fanny Kemble says : 
 
 " I have acted Ophelia three times with my father, 
 and each time in that beautiful scene where his madness 
 and his love gush forth together like a torrent swollen 
 with storms, that bears a thousand blossoms on its 
 
12 HAMLET. 
 
 stormy waters, I have experienced such deep emotion 
 as hardly to be able to speak. The exquisite tenderness 
 of his voice, the wild compassion and forlorn pity of 
 his looks, bestowing that on others which of all others 
 he most needed ; the melancholy restlessness, the bitter 
 self-scorning ; every shadow of expression and intona- 
 tion was so full of the mingled anguish that the human 
 heart is capable of enduring, that my eyes scarce 
 fixed on his ere they filled with tears, and long before 
 the scene was over, the letters and jewel-cases I was 
 tendering to him were wet with them. The hardness of 
 professed actors and actresses is something amazing. 
 After this part I could not but recall the various Ophe- 
 lias I have seen, and commend them for the astonishing 
 absence of everything like feeling which they exhibited. 
 Oh, it made my heart sore to act it." 
 
 Hamlet was the most popular character played by 
 Charles Mayne Young (1777-1856), an actor of the 
 Kemble school. It is related that during his first per- 
 formance of Hamlet in London, he was nearly discon- 
 certed by the persistent hissing of one man, who proved 
 to be his own father. Young lacked tenderness and 
 pathos, and was at his best in the play-scene and in the 
 fencing with Laertes. 
 
 On March 12, 1814, Edmund Kean (1787-1833) ap- 
 peared for the first time in London, as Hamlet. Miss 
 Smith (afterward Mrs. Hartley) was the Ophelia ; Dow- 
 ton, Polonius ; Bannister, the Grave-digger, and Ray- 
 mond, the Ghost. The curiosity of the public relative 
 to the new actor suffered no abatement, and the receipts 
 that evening were £660. The critics differed as to the 
 performance. He did not in his appearance answer the 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 13 
 
 previous notions of Hamlet, because it had been the 
 custom to associate with the character a grave, noble, 
 attenuated form, the ideal personification of grief. 
 However, he represented ably the better part of the 
 princely Dane — the intellectual part. 
 To further quote Barry Cornwall : 
 
 " We beheld, or rather felt, the real sadness of the 
 soul, the nobility of his nature, his filial affection, his 
 spirit lost in starry contemplation — in abstraction from 
 the things that be. We saw ' the rapt soul sitting in 
 the eyes.' 
 
 " Mrs. Garrick, who went to the theatre every night 
 of Kean's engagement, was not, it seems, entirely satis- 
 fied with his personification of Hamlet, and wrote to 
 him requesting him to call upon her. He went, and she 
 placed him in her husband's chair. It was the only 
 ■chair that she would allow him to sit in, and she said 
 that she would keep it solely for him. At the same 
 time, she insisted that in the closet-scene he was too 
 tame — that is to say, tamer than her husband. She 
 made him act it over again with her, and play it in her 
 ' husband's manner.' He was tired to death of this 
 instruction second-hand, but did not altogether disregard 
 it. In fact, he acted the closet-scene afterward in ' Gar- 
 rick's manner,' and never satisfied himself or others. 
 He always considered Hamlet to be his best part ; he 
 had studied it more than any other, and was outrageous 
 at having been coaxed into playing it in a manner con- 
 trary to his judgment." 
 
 Hazlitt said of Kean's Hamlet : 
 
 " It was too strong and pointed. There was often a 
 severity approaching to virulence, in the common 
 ■observations and answers. There is nothing of this in 
 Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in the cloud of 
 his reflections, and only thinks aloud. There should. 
 
14 HAMLET. 
 
 therefore, be no attempt to impress what he says upon 
 others by any exaggeration of emphasis or manner ; no 
 talking at his hearers. There should be as much of the 
 gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part, 
 and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness 
 should sit unwillingly upon his brow, but no appearance 
 of fixed or sullen gloom. He is full of ' weakness and 
 melancholy,' but there is no harshness in his nature. 
 Hamlet should be the most amiable of misanthropes. 
 There is no one line in the play that should be spoken 
 like any one line in Richard ; yet Mr. Kean did not appear 
 to us to keep the two characters always distinct. But 
 to point out the defects of Mr. Kean's performance is 
 a less grateful but much shorter task than to enumerate 
 the many striking beauties which he gave to it, both by 
 the power of his action and by the true feeling of 
 nature." 
 
 James H. Hackett, the famous Falstaff, says of Mr, 
 Kean's Hamlet: 
 
 " Of all the attempts to act Hamlet which I have seen, 
 Mr. [Edmund] Kean's pleased me most. In Hamlet's 
 advice to the players and in the strictly declamatory 
 portions of the character, Mr. Kean did not particularly 
 excel, but he seemed to me to have inspired and more 
 ably to illustrate the soul of Hamlet than any actor 
 whom I have seen in the part ; its intellectuality and 
 sensitiveness were wrought into transparent prominency; 
 every particle of its satire was given with extraordinary 
 pungency; its sentiment was on each occasion very 
 impressively uttered, and the melancholy was plaintively 
 toned and sympathy-winning ; the action was free and 
 natural and never ungraceful, the passion heart-stirring, 
 and the poetry was read with correct emphasis and a 
 nice ear to rhythmical measure ; yet Kean's Hamlet, 
 which surprised and enraptured me, I discovered, to my 
 surprise and chagrin, was not particularly appreciated 
 by the most intelligent of our New York audiences." 
 
HAMLET. 15 
 
 ItttllttS ^JJtttMS ^jOrjCrttX. 
 
 Junius Brutus Booth (1796 — 1852), father of the 
 present tragedian, Edwin Booth, at his first benefit in 
 New York played Hamlet and Jerry Sneak the same 
 evening ! Hamlet was his favorite part. 
 
 Gould says of it: 
 
 " The total impression left by Mr. Booth's Hamlet at 
 the time of its occurrence, and which still abides, was 
 that of a spiritual melancholy, at once acute and pro- 
 found. This quality colored his tenderest feeling and 
 his airiest fancy as well as his graver purpose. You felt 
 its presence even when he was off the stage. As the 
 Claude mirror defines, refines, and tones the landscape, 
 so Booth's impersonation left a saddened and mysterious 
 charm to the vast world of Hamlet's thought and ob- 
 servation." 
 
 Mr. Hackett says : 
 
 " Mr. Booth read Hamlet with a good degree of un- 
 derstanding, and he had a fine intellectual eye and cast 
 of countenance (1831), but his voice was nasal, the 
 action of his arms awkward — they seemed as though 
 they were pinioned at the elbows; he was below the 
 medium stature and had very bandy legs, and his gait 
 and bearing were not susceptible of depicting any per- 
 sonal dignity; indeed, such were Mr. Booth's natural 
 impediments that no human genius could surmount, or 
 blind an intelligent spectator, or cause him to forget 
 them, and esteem his personation of Hamlet satisfactory 
 or tolerable." 
 
 ■ Booth having been kind to a horse-thief named Fon- 
 taine, alias Lovett, confined in the Louisville jail, and 
 paying counsel to defend him, although the case was 
 hopeless, Lovett bequeathed his skull to the actor, re- 
 questing him that he would use it on the stage in Ham- 
 
i6 HAMLET. 
 
 let, and think when he held it in his hands of the grati- 
 tude his kindness had awakened. Accordingly, after 
 the thief had been hanged, the skull was sent to Mr. 
 Booth's - residence. He was not at home, and Mrs. 
 Booth, finding the horrible gift left at the house, had it 
 sent back forthwith to the doctor, who had prepared and 
 delivered it. In 1857 the doctor sent the same skull to 
 Edwin Booth who used it a few times in the grave-yard 
 scene, and then had it buried. 
 
 Charles Kean (i8ii-i868), the sonof Edmund Kean, 
 first played Hamlet in London, at Drury Lane, January 
 8, 1838. His former appearances in London had not 
 been successful, and this, after some years in the prov- 
 inces, was looked upon as his real d6but in the great 
 city. He had to contend, as he did through life, with 
 the memory of his father, but he won much praise from 
 the critics of the time. It was admitted, however, that 
 his Hamlet was too tearful for the best effect. He acted 
 the part for twenty-one nights during this engagement, 
 to a total of £6,2-i,6. He had never seen his father in 
 the part, and his " business " was his own. His fencing 
 was much praised. On the whole, it was thought that 
 he was more melodramatic than Shakspearian. 
 
 Mr. James H. Hackett, who was extremely fastidious 
 in his taste for Hamlets, says : 
 
 " Charles Kean's Hamlet discovers various proofs of 
 a defective ear, by sundry false emphases, bad cadences 
 and misplaced pauses ; his personation was remarkable 
 for clap-trap effects with which it superabounds; in short, 
 it was a tissue of bustle, rant and posturing; his person 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 17 
 
 underwent unceasing locomotion, and was not in repose 
 even during the profoundest of the metaphysical solilo- 
 quies." 
 
 So much for the criticism of one who essayed the 
 part of Hamlet himself, and not with superabounding 
 success either. Mr. Kean was highly complimented by 
 J. G. Lockhart, the biographer of Sir Walter Scott ; by 
 Serjeant Talford, Serjeant Adams, J. H. Merivale, and 
 others, all of whom are on record in Cole's •' Life and 
 Times of Charles Kean" (i860). 
 
 The Morning Post (London) said, in substance, that 
 Mr. Kean tried to combine the romantic style of acting 
 Hamlet, of which Edmund Kean was the most promi- 
 nent representative, with the classic style, of which Mr. 
 Young was the most distinguished professor, but that 
 the romantic predominated. 
 
 A year later the Post said : 
 
 '• In relation to Mr. Kean's Hamlet, there will be 
 always conflicting opinions. Our own is, that it is of a 
 very high order. Unequal, it is true, but at times full 
 of fire, at-times, of feeling; never violating proprieties, 
 and often producing fine effects. Let us, however, add 
 that Hamlet is to our mind the most difficult part within 
 our knowledge of all the conceptions of Shakspeare ; 
 that Mr. Kean's own father misread it, and gave us a 
 startling performance instead of a true one ; that John 
 Kemble did not master all its fine subtle delicacies, and 
 that Charles Young alone of all whom we have seen 
 play it, brought it nearest to anything like an even and 
 equable perfection," 
 
i8 HAMLET. 
 
 William C Macready (1793-1873) first played Ham- 
 let in 181 1, at Newcastle, at the age of eighteen. He 
 says of it: 
 
 "A total failure in Hamlet is of rare occurrence. My 
 crude essay, like those of many others, was pronounced 
 a success ; but the probing inquiry and laborious study 
 of my afterlife have manifested to me how little, was 
 due to my skill in that early personation. The thought 
 and practice I have through my professional career 
 devoted to it, made it, in my own judgment and in those 
 of critics whom I had most reason to fear and respect, 
 one of my most finished, though not the most popular 
 of my repertoire." 
 
 Nevertheless he says elsewhere that in America no 
 play drew so much money as Hamlet when he appeared 
 in it. 
 
 George Henry Lewes says : 
 
 " His [Macready's] Hamlet I thought bad, due allow- 
 ance being made for the intelligence displayed. He 
 was lachrymose and fretful; too fond of a cambric 
 pocket handkerchief to be really affecting ; nor, as it 
 seemed to me, had he that sympathy with the character 
 which would have given an impressive unity to his per- 
 formance — it was ' a thing of shreds and patches,' not 
 a whole." 
 
 Hackett on Macready's Hamlet : 
 
 " Mr. Macready continues after Hamlet's opening 
 scene to weep and whine too much, and resorts to his 
 handkerchief too often ; moves about the stage too 
 often and too briskly, and in too clerk-like a gait for 
 one of a princely education, leisurely habits and a con- 
 templative turn of mind ; his manner is also generally 
 
HAMLET. 19 
 
 too hurried and restless, and he imparts to the features a 
 spasmodic expression in many of their variations. In 
 speaking he seldom used his left arm, but kept it under 
 his cloak ; in short, his manner generally wanted ease, 
 was seldom graceful, and never exhibited the repose 
 characteristic of a philosophic mind." 
 
 James E. Murdoch on the same subject : 
 
 " As a well-painted picture, harmonious in its details, 
 well executed in perspective, perfect in light and shade, 
 and striking in its objective point of sight, natural in 
 tone and color, appropriately framed and artistically 
 hung, fills the eye of the beholder with pleasure, so was 
 Macready's Hamlet an object of infinite delight to the 
 auditor. It was almost universally considered the mas- 
 ter-piece of- England's most artistic and intellectual 
 tragedian. Yet in a dramatic sense, from the stand- 
 point of natural effect, it was merely a picture of the 
 melancholy and still intensely impassioned child of sor- 
 row and affliction. We mean that it was such a picture 
 that one might stand before it entranced in a generalism 
 of human sympathies, and yet it lacked any strongly 
 individual or central point of affinity. How often do 
 we hear the remark, ' That is a beautiful or highly 
 finished picture of such or such a one,' or ' that is a 
 speaking likeness of my friend ; he talks to me from the 
 canvas, and yet, I confess, it might be more artistically 
 executed in detail.' " 
 
 In the scene with Horatio just before the entrance of 
 the court who assemble to witness the play, Macready, 
 at the words, 
 
 " Thejr are coming to the play ; I must be idle,'' 
 
 waved a handkerchief and skipped about the stage per- 
 forming what Forrest called the pas de mouchoir. This 
 so offended the taste of the American actor when he saw 
 Macready in Edinburgh that he hissed, an act which 
 
20 HAMLET. 
 
 was indirectly the cause of one of the most lamentable 
 episodes in the history of the theatre. Macready, in 
 his diary, says : 
 
 "Edinburgh, March 2 (1846) — Acted Hamlet with 
 particular care, energy and discrimination. On review- 
 ing the performance I can conscientiously pronounce it 
 one of the very best I have ever given of Hamlet. At 
 the waving of the handkerchief before the play, and 
 ' I must be idle,' a man on the right side of the stage 
 hissed ! The audience took it up, and I waved the more 
 and bowed derisively and contemptuously to the individ- 
 ual. The audience carried it although he was very 
 staunch to his purpose. It discomposed me, and alas ! 
 might have ruined many ; but I bore it down. I thought 
 of speaking to the audience if called on, and spoke to 
 Murray about it, but he very discreetly dissuaded me. 
 Was called for and very warmly greeted. Ryder came 
 and told me that the hisser was observed and said to be 
 a Mr. W who was in company with Mr. Forrest ! 
 
 "March 3. Fifty-three years have I lived to-day. 
 Both Mr. Murray and Mr. Ryder are possessed with the 
 belief that Mr. Forrest was the man who hissed last 
 night. I begin to think he was the man." 
 
 Forrest was the man. He made no denial, but on 
 the other hand, in the newspaper controversy that fol- 
 lowed, attempted to justify himself in so doing. The 
 quarrel grew hot between the two actors, and when 
 Macready appeared in this country two years later it 
 was 'taken up with great fierceness, both by the men 
 themselves, and by their injudicious friends. Finally, 
 the contest culminated in an attempt to drive Macready 
 from the stage while he was playing at the Astor Place 
 Opera House in New York, in May, 1849. A riot took 
 place, the National Guard were called out, and they 
 
HAMLET. 21 
 
 being attacked by the mob, fired, leaving thirty dead 
 bodies on the ground, and wounding severely as many 
 more. 
 
 Forrest retained his critical habit till late in life ; and 
 when Barry Sullivan was playing in this country his 
 innovations were shown to be very distasteful to the 
 veteran who occupied a box at the Walnut Street 
 Theatre, "Philadelphia. 
 
 As Barrett tells us : 
 
 "He had shown his dislike of many changes in the 
 production of Hamlet, during the first two acts, and his 
 bearing had attracted the attention of Sullivan and the 
 audience. Hamlet bided his time, and when he came 
 to a point in the second act which he thought offered 
 him the opportunity he wanted, he took Guildenstern 
 and Rosencrantz aside, and advancing toward the box 
 in which Forrest sat, pointed his finger at him, and said 
 in the words of the text : ' Do you see that great baby 
 yonder? He is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts.' 
 Mingled hisses and applause were the actor's reward for 
 what was certainly ' a hit, a palpable hit,' although 
 perhaps not in the best taste." 
 
 James Rees, one of Forrest's biographers, who, as a 
 rule, defends him in everything, blames him for hissing 
 Macready, not merely on the ground of bad taste and 
 discourtesy, but for the reason that a fancy dance, as 
 Forrest calls it, was not out of place for Hamlet to 
 perform in his state of mind, which, as Mr. Rees holds, 
 with Charles Kemble, was insanity. Mr. Rees says 
 further that the dance was not original with Macready, 
 but that he had seen it done at the Chestnut Street 
 Theatre, Philadelphia, years before, but by what actor 
 he does not say. 
 
22 HAMLET. 
 
 Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) was not physically suited 
 to represent Hamlet, although it was a favorite with 
 him, and it was admitted that he read the part with 
 great discrimination, and that his conception was excel- 
 lent. " Hamlet," says Barrett, " added nothing to his 
 fame." 
 
 Hackett says : 
 
 " I was present at Forrest's original d6but as Hamlet 
 (1829), but he seemed out of his element; his spirit 
 seemed incapable of being subdued to the normal quality 
 and meditative propensity of Hamlet's philosophic mind; 
 his iron nerve and powerful physique appeared to pant 
 continually for opportunities or pretext to display them- 
 selves ; his evident uneasiness suggested to me such as 
 I would conceive natural to a young but full-grown and 
 newly-caged Hon ; indeed, it struck me that could Mr. 
 Forrest's Hamlet have been, through some accident, 
 allowed to ventilate his own impulses for a few moments 
 as soon as his father's Ghost had bidden him 'Adieu,' 
 etc., he would have bounded unceremoniously into the 
 presence of his uncle Claudius, and with the impetu- 
 osity of an enraged and sinewy athlete have driven his 
 rapier through and through his heart, and ended the 
 play in the first act." 
 
 Of all the latter-day Hamlets none was the cause of 
 so much discussion as that of Charles Fechter (1824- 
 1879). It was so in England ; it was particularly so in 
 this country where the Hamlet of Edwin Booth had 
 come to be accepted as a model. Fechter's differed 
 from his as radically as the rose differs from the lily; 
 conception, performance, appearance — all were different. 
 
^■1 
 
 <w^;f/f^^-t4a.H/At ^ 
 
 '^'^ ' ' i»kM&M!^.J^l^^" '"*<^ 
 
 EDWIN FORREST, 
 
HAMLET. 23 
 
 Everywhere Fechter created two parties, — those who 
 admired him intensely, and those who condemned him 
 wholly. Few there were who took half-way ground ; he 
 was either a wonderful artist, or he was little better 
 than a mountebank. ' 
 
 Hermann Vezin, in whose opinion Hermann Hendrich 
 was the very finest Hamlet he had ever seen, says Fech- 
 ter will rank high in the roll of great actors who have 
 excelled in that character. 
 
 Wilkie Collins is more decided: 
 
 " From Macready downward, I have, I think, seen 
 every Hamlet of any note and mark during the last five 
 and thirty years. The true Hamlet I first saw when 
 Fechter stepped on the stage. These words, if they 
 merely expressed my own opinion, it is needless to say, 
 would never have been written. But they express the 
 opinion of every unprejudiced person under fifty years 
 with whom I have met." 
 
 Fechter's Hamlet was remarkable for its impetuosity, 
 thus differing radically from the indecision and waver- 
 ing which are characteristic of most conceptions of the 
 part. In an article in the Atlantic ^November, 1870), 
 Kate Field argues in justification of this view, that the 
 entire action of the play covers only ten days, whereas 
 Richard Grant White held that it covered as many years. 
 When, however, this article was reprinted in Miss Field's 
 " Life of Fechter," this argument was omitted. 
 
 Some of the peculiarities of Fechter's Hamlet are 
 thus grouped together by Mr. Button Cook : 
 
 " It was the firm belief of Fechter's Hamlet, in defi- 
 ance of general opinion to the contrary, that Queen 
 Gertrude was Claudius's accomplice in the murder of 
 
24 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 her husband. In the time of Fechter's Hamlet it was 
 the fashion in Denmark to wear a medaUion portrait^ 
 swinging from a gold chain, round the neck. Fechter's 
 Hamlet wore thus a portrait of his father ; the Queen 
 .wore a portrait of Claudius; Guildenstern was similarly- 
 adorned. Usually there is not a pin to choose between 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; the unfortunate gentle- 
 men are alike odious to Hamlet, and they are slaugh- 
 tered off the stage, at the instigation of the Prince, after 
 they have been well murdered in the presence of the 
 house by their histrionic representatives. But to 
 Fechter's Hamlet, Rosencrantz was less hateful than 
 Guildenstern : Rosencrantz wore no portrait around his 
 neck. When Fechter's Hamlet spoke his first speech, 
 and compared the late King to Hyperion, and Claudius 
 to a satyr, he produced and gazed fondly at his father's 
 picture ; when he mentioned his uncle's 'picture in little,' 
 he illustrated his meaning by handling the medallion 
 worn by Guildenstern ; in his closet-scene, he placed his 
 miniature of his father side by side with his mother's 
 miniature of Claudius ; when at the close of their inter- 
 view Gertrude would embrace her son, he held up sternly 
 the portrait of his father ; the wretched woman recoiled 
 and staggered from the stage, and Hamlet reverentially 
 kissed the picture as he murmured, ' I must be cruel to 
 be kind.' In the play-scene, Fechter's Hamlet, when he 
 rose at the discomfiture of Claudius, tore the leaves 
 from the playbook and flung them in the air ; in the 
 scene with Ophelia, Fechter's Hamlet did not perceive 
 that the King was watching them : had he known that 
 he would have been so convinced of his uncle's guilt 
 that the play would have been unnecessary. In the 
 fourth act, if Fechter's Hamlet had not been well 
 guarded, he would have killed the King then and there. 
 In the last scene a gallery ran at the back of the 
 stage, with short flights of stairs on either side, all exits 
 and entrances being made by means of these stairs. 
 Upon the confession of Laertes the King endeavored 
 
HAMLET. 25 
 
 to escape up the right-hand staircase ; Hamlet, perceiv- 
 ing this, rushes up the left-hand stairs and encountering 
 Claudius in the centre of the gallery there dispatched 
 him." 
 
 Other points in this great personation are elsewhere 
 noted. 
 
 Charles Dickens, in the Kn^n^t Atlantic for 1869, 
 wrote : 
 
 " Perhaps no innovation in art was ever accepted with 
 so much favor by so many intellectual persons precom- 
 mitted to, and preoccupied by, another system as Mr. 
 Fechter's Hamlet. I take this to have been the case 
 (as it unquestionably was in London), not because of 
 its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, 
 not because of its many scattered beauties, but 
 because of its perfect consistency with itself. As 
 the animal painter said of his favorite picture of rabbits 
 that there was more nature about those rabbits than 
 you usually found in rabbits, so it may be said of Mr. 
 Fechter's Hamlet that there was more consistency about 
 that Hamlet than you usually found in Hamlets. Its 
 great and satisfying originality was in its possessing the 
 merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea. From 
 the first appearance of the broken glass of fashion and 
 mould of form, pale and worn with weeping for his 
 father's death, and remotely suspicious of its cause, to 
 his final struggle with Horatio for the fatal cup, there 
 were cohesion and coherence in Mr. Fechter's view of 
 the character. Devrient, the German actor, had some 
 years before in London fluttered the theatrical doves 
 considerably, by such changes as being seated when 
 instructing the players, and like mild departures from 
 established usage ; but he had worn, in the main, the old 
 nondescript dress, and had held forth, in the main, in 
 the old way, hovering between sanity and madness. I 
 do not remember whether he wore his hair crisply curled 
 
26 HAMLET. 
 
 short, as if he were going to an everlasting dancing 
 master's party at the Danish court ; but I do remember 
 that most other Hamlets since the great Kemble had 
 been bound to do so. Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, a pale, 
 woe-begone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a 
 strange garb never associated with the part upon the 
 English stage (if ever seen there at all), and making a 
 piratical swoop upon the whole fleet of Httle theatrical 
 prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson's 
 celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that 
 a wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary 
 success but for its animation by one pervading purpose, 
 to which all changes were made intelligently subservient. 
 The bearing of this purpose on the treatment of Ophelia, 
 on the death of Polonius, and on the old student fellow- 
 ship between Hamlet and Horatio, was exceedingly 
 striking; and the difference between picturesqueness of 
 stage-effect, and for the elucidation of a meaning, was 
 well displayed in there having been a gallery of musicians 
 at the play, and in one of them passing on his way out, 
 with his instrument in his hand, when Hamlet seeing it, 
 took it from him to point his talk with Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern." 
 
 George Henry Lewes, who wrote of Fechter when 
 Fechter was at his best, and before he had been seen in 
 this country at all, dwells upon his ability to properly 
 represent the character in appearance : " He is lymphatic, 
 delicate, handsome; and, with his long flaxen curls, 
 quivering sensitive nostrils, fine eyes, and sympathetic 
 voice, perfectly represents the graceful Prince. His 
 aspect and bearing are such that the eye rests on him 
 with delight." Mr. Lewes thought that Fechter excelled 
 in the scenes which demand the qualities of an accom- 
 plished comedian, and it was only in the more tragic 
 portions that any shortcoming was felt. "It is the 
 
HAMLET. 27 
 
 nearest approach that I have seen to the reaHzation of 
 Goethe's idea expounded in the celebrated critique in 
 Wilhelm Meister, that there is a burden laid on Hamlet 
 too heavy for his soul to bear." 
 
 Clement Scott says (in the London Theatre) : 
 
 " Fechter broke down tradition, but he was not always 
 intelligible. He was the first daring man who uttered 
 his protest against the mouthing and ranting and bom- 
 bastic school. But he could hardly speak the language 
 and he was misunderstood. It required an intense 
 sympathy with the reformer to adopt, without hesitation, 
 the method of the reform. His idea struck home to 
 the poetical mind, but it was caviare to the general pub- 
 lic. A very educated palate indeed was required to 
 swallow Fechter's Hamlet, even at his best." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "When Fechter played Hamlet at the Princess's Theatre 
 the fight between the new school and the old became so 
 furious that it was dangerous to approach the subject 
 of the Frenchman's Hamlet at club or tavern ; a fight that 
 was only carried to a successful issue by the weight of 
 the opinions of men like George Henry Lewes, who had 
 the courage of their opinions, and who had seen acting 
 in other countries than our own. Why, Fechter's Ham- 
 let, and everything pertaining to Fechter would have 
 been laughed off the stage, ridiculed, insulted and con- 
 demned had the old play-goer been allowed to have had 
 entirely his own way." — Theatre, Nov., 1884. 
 
 George B. Woods, in Old and New, April, 1870: 
 
 " If anything is certain about Hamlet it is that he is 
 princely, but this Prince forgets even to be a gentle- 
 man — often in his demeanor toward Polonius, very 
 seriously in his treatment of Marcellus whom he brutally 
 
28 HAMLET. 
 
 snubs again and again merely because he is eager to 
 speak with Horatio alone. If there is an established 
 trait in Hamlet's character it is the ' infirmity of will and 
 discontinuit}' of purpose,' which Mr. Lowell thinks he 
 inherited from his frail mother. But here is a Hamlet 
 as quick as Hotspur, as passionate as Romeo, whose 
 doubt-crowded soliloquies are a constant contradiction 
 to his ardor of temperament. But in the midst of all 
 these most logical and incontrovertible objections, the 
 critical spectator, unless he be a man of ice or fortified 
 in a chain armor of prejudice, finds himself thrilled to 
 his finger ends by some light touch of the actor ; mag- 
 netized by a flitting gesture quick as light and illuminat- 
 ing a sentence with a meaning hitherto unsuspected; 
 moved to tears by a tender or pathetic utterance ; trans- 
 fixed by a passionate exclamation, a word or look of 
 scorn or love which lays the very heart of Hamlet 
 beside the sympathetic heart of the spectator. No one 
 can hear the tragedian hurl forth his epithets at the 
 absent King like a succession of shots from a battery of 
 artillery, 'Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless 
 villain ' ; no one can watch the look which comes over 
 his face as he parts from Ophelia, loving her with all the 
 intensity of a fervid nature, angry at her part in spying 
 upon him, driven by his destiny to crush her heart and 
 his own ; no one can see even so small a thing as the 
 gesture by which he first reveals his hatred of the King; 
 or the motion of his hand as he questions Horatio and 
 the soldiers around him about the Ghost — and deny 
 that he has greatness — greatness such as is given to 
 few actors in a generation." 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 29 
 
 In the summer of 1852, while the elder Booth and 
 his sons, Edwin (born 1833) and Junius Brutus, were 
 playing an unsuccessful engagement in Sacramento, all 
 three took benefits; Edwin, for his appearing as Jaffier 
 in " Venice Preserved." The dress was a black velvet 
 tunic. The elder Booth, moody and thoughtful as was 
 his wont, exclaimed, after gazing at his son for some 
 time: " You look like Hamlet; why don't you play it?" 
 " Perhaps I may, if I should ever have another benefit," 
 was the reply. The following November the father died. 
 Edwin remained in California, a stock actor in his 
 brother's company, playing everything from farce in a 
 black face to Richard, Shylock and Macbeth. In these 
 Shakspearian characters he had been received with 
 much favor, and, finally, remembering the reply he had 
 made to his father's suggestion, he did play Hamlet for 
 his benefit, and for the first time in his life. It was his 
 greatest success then, and it has since become, to quote 
 Mr. Winter, "the part which has been the chief means of 
 his development, his fortune, his fame, and the genuine, 
 permanent and loving esteem in which he is held by 
 the great body of his countrymen." Mr. Booth first 
 played Hamlet in New York, at Burton's, in 1857. Be- 
 ginning November 26, 1864, and ending March 24, 1865, 
 he played the part at the Winter Garden, for 100 nights, 
 at that time the longest run any Shakspearian play had 
 ever enjoyed in America. Transferred to the Boston 
 Theatre, it was played till the 14th of April, when the 
 assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth 
 led his brother Edwin to immediate retirement from the 
 
3° 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 stage, with no expectation of ever again appearing in 
 public. When, however, in response to the almost uni- 
 versal sentiment that he should not abandon his life- 
 work because of the crime of another, he reappeared 
 at the Winter Garden, January 3, 1866, it was in the 
 same character of Hamlet, notwithstanding the fact that 
 one paper in New York, standing by itself and for itself, 
 pronounced it the drama of assassination. His reception 
 was of the most enthusiastic nature. 
 
 On January 22, 1867, he was presented with the Ham- 
 let medal, by a committee of distinguished citizens. 
 Among those appearing on the stage at the presentation 
 were Admiral Farragut, Admiral Palmer, Gen. Ander- 
 son — the hero of Fort Sumter ; Gov. Hoffman, George 
 Bancroft, Charles A. Dana, Albert Bierstadt, Richard 
 O'Gorman and William Fullerton. 
 
 The praises of Booth's Hamlet have been the subject 
 of some of the most graceful pens in America. There 
 is scarcely a magazine, review or newspaper of any lit- 
 erary pretensions that has not contained an article or 
 articles of this kind, varying of course in the warmth 
 of their admiration, but almost without exception eulo- 
 gistic or commendatory. 
 
 George William Curtis, in the Easy Chair, Harper's 
 Magazine, April, 1865, says: 
 
 " What Garrick was in Richard III., or Edmund Kean 
 in Shylock, we are sure Edwin Booth is in Hamlet. 
 Booth looks the ideal Hamlet. For the Hamlet of our 
 imaginations, which is the Hamlet of Shakspeare, is not 
 the 'scant of breath' gentleman whom the severer 
 critics insist that he should be. He is a sad, slight prince. 
 Booth is altogether princely. His costume is still the sol- 
 emn suit of sables, varied according to his fancy of greater 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 31 
 
 fitness, and his small lithe form, with his mobihty and 
 intellectual sadness of face and his large melancholy 
 eyes satisfy the most fastidious imagination that this is 
 Hamlet as he lived in Shakspeare's world. His playing 
 throughout has an exquisite tone, like an old picture. It 
 is not any particular scene, or passage, or look, or move- 
 ment that conveys the impression ; it is the consistency 
 of every part with every other, the pervasive sense of 
 the mind of a true gentleman sadly strained and jarred. 
 Through the whole play the mind is borne on in mourn- 
 ful reverie. It is not so much what he says or does 
 that we observe ; for under all, beneath every scene and 
 word and act, we hear what is not audible, the melan- 
 choly music of the sweet bells jangled, out of tune and 
 harsh." 
 
 Mr. William Winter, who more than any other man 
 has studied Booth in all his moods, says in Harper's for 
 June, 1881 : 
 
 " In former days his acting retained the exuberance 
 of a youthful spirit, before the philosophic mind had 
 checked the headlong currents of the heart or curbed 
 imagination in its lawless flight. Even his Hamlet was 
 touched with this elemental fire. Not alone in the great 
 junctures of the tragedy — the encounters with the Ghost, 
 the parting with Ophelia, the climax of the play-scene, 
 the slaughter of poor old Polonius in delirious mistake 
 for the King, and the.avouchment to Laertes in the 
 grave-yard — was he brilliant and impetuous, but in 
 almost everything this quality of temperament showed 
 itself, and here, of course, it was in excess. He no 
 longer hurls the pipes into the flies when saying, 
 ' Though you may fret me you cannot play upon me,' 
 but he used to do so then, and the rest of the perform- 
 ance was of a piece with that part of it. He needed in 
 that period of his development the most terrible pas- 
 sions to deal with. Pathos and spirituality and the 
 
32 HAMLET. 
 
 mountain air of great thought were yet to grow. His 
 Hamlet was only dazzling, the glorious possibility of 
 what it has since become. No person can be said to 
 know Edwin Booth's acting who has not seen him play 
 the same part several times. His artistic treatment, 
 indeed, will generally be found adequate, but his mood 
 or spirit will continually vary. He cannot, at will, com- 
 mand it, and when it is absent his performance seems 
 cold. Standing on the lonely ramparts of Elsinore and 
 with awe-stricken, preoccupied, involuntary glances 
 questioning the star-lit midnight air, while he talks with 
 his attendant friends, Edwin Booth's Hamlet is the sim- 
 ple and absolute realization of Shakspeare's haunted 
 Prince, and leaves no room for inquiry, whether the 
 Danes in the middle ages wore velvet robes or had long 
 flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, melancholy, beau- 
 tiful — a vision of dignity, and of grace, made sublime 
 by suffering, made weird and awful by 'thoughts beyond 
 the reaches of our souls.' Sorrow never looked more 
 wofully and ineffably lovely than his sorrow looks in 
 the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke 
 with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation 
 than is heard in his tempestuous cry of delirium, 'Nay, 
 I know not; is it the King? ' " 
 
 The English critics did not receive Mr. Booth's Ham- 
 let with such unqualified admiration as this. He re- 
 ceived a cordial welcome there in 1880, but the critics 
 did not find his personation faultless. 
 
 Mr. Clement Scott, of the London Telegraph, wrote 
 as follows : 
 
 " He has a fine stage face, well cut, animated and in- 
 tellectual, and an elastic walk ; a poor and unattractive 
 dress, contrasting by its dinginess with the gorgeous 
 glitter of the court ; tangled black hair, well off the face 
 but hanging in feminine disorder down the back — this 
 was Edwin Booth, who looked as if he had stepped out 
 
HAMLET. 33 
 
 of some old theatrical print in the days of elocution 
 and before the era of natural and real acting. It was 
 impossible to keep the attention off that remarkable 
 face, that strange power of expression, those eyes that 
 rolled and changed. It was a fascinating picture in spite 
 of the poverty of the princely costume, and then it 
 suddenly struck the attention : Is this Hamlet? Mod- 
 ern playgoers have seen two Hamlets of considerable 
 weight — the tearful expression, the sadly reddened eyes, 
 the pathetic prettiness of Fechter, and the dejected, un- 
 nerved and eminently poetical depression of Henry 
 Irving. No one can say positively who is right or 
 wrong. 
 
 " But when Mr. Booth, at his entrance, seizes the 
 attention of the audience with that sharp and emphatic 
 presence and those eyes that flash intelligence and say 
 as much as the studied gesture, our thoughts revert to 
 the text and we think of the veiled lids, the nighted 
 color, the fruitful river in the eye, the dejected 'haviour 
 of the visage ; where are they in the Hamlet that stands 
 before us? How can they be detected in this nervous 
 physical strength, and this clear staccato manner? The 
 play proceeds, scene after scene, and act after act, and 
 the naturally ideal Hamlet seems omitted from the pro- 
 gram. He never makes the blood course through 
 the veins, warms the emotions or touches the sympathies. 
 Our hearts are unreached. Gradually the attention was 
 directed to Hamlet, the actor, and not Hamlet, the ideal. 
 The contemplation of Hamlet from an intellectual point 
 of view became too soon an impossibility. It was an 
 actor's Hamlet, a Hamlet of point, a Hamlet built upon 
 the teaching of old schools, and, as such, a very admir- 
 able Hamlet. The audience was at once fascinated by 
 the clear and measured delivery of Mr. Booth. It was 
 academical and correct to a fault. Not a word of the 
 text escaped anybody or was lost. This was such a 
 novelty that the great tirades and soliloquies received 
 more than their accustomed praise and called down 
 
34 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 extravagant enthusiasm. If we require nothing but the 
 soft and moving delivery of the text of Hamlet, no one 
 can do it better than Mr. Booth ; but to modern ideas 
 something more is wanted than a reading of Hamlet on 
 the stage. 
 
 " The days of the old classical school are dead and 
 buried, though let no one imagine that the new Hamlet 
 ever bores his audience for five minutes. Mr. Booth is 
 correct, but his manner is wanting in sympathy, in ideality 
 and in persuasion. We are always thinking of the actor, 
 never of the man. We are admiring the representative 
 of the Prince of Denmark, but are not admitted into 
 the penetralia of the philosophic mind of Hamlet. Up 
 to the play-scene there were some happy, but never very 
 impressive moments, and Mr. Booth does not waste time 
 or patience in creating or elaborating striking business 
 for effect. All has been rhetorical and neat, but, save 
 at the end of Ophelia's scene and in the speech, ' What 
 a rogue and peasant slave am I,' excitement has not 
 been stirred. The play-scene is after all the test of 
 both the mental and physical Hamlet. Here, strange 
 to say, Mr. Booth made the least effect. The utterance 
 was eminently measured, musical and incisive, but the 
 manner was anything but typical and pictorial. The 
 actor never lost himself in a scene, which is surely the 
 climax of all Hamlet's hopes and ambitions, the con- 
 firmation of his doubts. But ideally considered, the 
 scene was singularly cold. As in the scene with the 
 players, so with the recorders there was a sly and sup- 
 pressed humor. 
 
 "But Mr. Booth is far too orthodox a student to 
 degrade his conception by mere point-making, and what- 
 ever may be said of his Hamlet, it does not contain one 
 grain or trace of unworthy trifling or vulgarity. It is 
 cold and classical to a fault, but nothing moves the artist 
 from his unbending purpose. The scene with the mother 
 failed in effect mainly because no effect was sought, and 
 it was too late now to build up an ideal Hamlet. But 
 
HAMLET. 35 
 
 even from the standpoint of an actor's Hamlet, the words, 
 'Is it the King?' missed fire. The face was not illu- 
 mined and the words hissed out, but Hamlet rushed 
 across the stage to his mother, and screamed the words 
 in a somewhat overstrained and melodramatic fashion. 
 The reserve of the actor enabled him to do more than 
 justice to the churchyard-scene, which tries the muscle 
 of exhausted Hamlets. Here Mr. Booth revived won- 
 derfully and interested the audience at a late hour. But 
 the fencing and the death appeared to us to be singularly 
 ill managed and ineffective, and the closing scene, having 
 been robbed of all poetic significance, seemed to be 
 commonplace." 
 
 Mr. J. Palgrave Simpson, in the Theatre (London) 
 for December, 1880, says: 
 
 " Instead of being the slave of tradition, I found him 
 constantly neglecting old traditional points, of which 
 his manner after the play-scene, when his exultation 
 would not give him time to wait until the crowd had 
 wholly dispersed, was, perhaps, the most notable ex- 
 ample, for effects which commended themselves better 
 to his true matured intelligence. Another instance may 
 be given in his delivery of the words, ' I'll rant as well 
 as thou,' which were not howled and ranted as is com- 
 monly the case, but uttered with a profound contempt 
 of the ranting of Laertes. To my mind, and especially 
 on the second occasion of my witnessing his perform- 
 ance, Edwin Booth was eminently natural, and to be 
 looked on as an admirable exponent of the more ap- 
 proved ' new school.' " 
 
 " Throughout he was the Prince, without any display 
 of stilted dignity, but graceful in his courtesy and 
 gentlemanly in his condescension. His charm of man- 
 ner in this respect was especially to be remarked in the 
 scenes with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in his excel- 
 lently delivered and modestly reticent advice to the 
 players, and in his scene with Osric, whom he treated 
 
36 HAMLET. 
 
 with the utmost courtesy, displaying his contempt of 
 the fop in suppressed tones of voice, and playful by-play 
 with Horatio, instead of anger or impatience. His ex- 
 quisite tenderness toward Ophelia, to whom the words 
 ' Go to a nunnery ' were uttered as a warning voice of a 
 man who really loved her, and not as indignant denunci- 
 ation, was such as to reach every heart. The same may 
 be said of the closet-scene with the Queen, in his dis- 
 play of filial forbearance, which was made as prominent 
 as was consistent with the purpose of reproach." 
 
 Button Cook, in his " Nights at the Play," says: 
 "Altogether, so far as a first judgment after one 
 hearing can be trusted, Mr. Booth's Hamlet is a spirited, 
 elaborate, painstaking and expert, but conventional 
 performance. He presents essentially the Hamlet of 
 tae stage with variations and embroideries of immaterial 
 quality, and not the Hamlet of the student of Shaks- 
 peare. His chief aim is theatrical effectiveness of the 
 old-fashioned sort. His Hamlet, in truth, may be said to 
 be the Hamlet of the past. Often I found myself re- 
 minded of the Hamlet of Charles Kean; if I missed 
 his physical demerits, I missed also his intensity, his 
 special power of startling and kindling his audience. 
 Something the Englishman (Irving) would gain if he 
 could emulate the American's promptness, vigilance, 
 decisiveness of manner, ease of action and freedom of 
 limb. But, as I think, the Hamlet of Mr. Irving is 
 to be preferred in that it is more picturesque, more 
 poetic, more intellectually interesting and altogether 
 more genuinely Shakspearian." 
 
 Mr. Booth's German critics were enthusiastic in his 
 praise as will be seen by the following extracts from the 
 German press, translated for the New York Tribune : 
 
 Oscar Welten in the TagUche Berliner Rundschau. 
 
 " Booth is the best Hamlet I have ever seen. Neither 
 Rossi, Devrient nor Barnay — not to mention the minor 
 
HAMLET. 37 
 
 celebrities — can be put on the same level with him. 
 Joseph Wagner is perhaps the only one who can be 
 compared with him, and Wagner is dead. Even he 
 failed to make me understand Hamlet as the great 
 American did. You can understand Booth perfectly 
 even though you may not know a single word of what 
 he utters. Here his essential power as an actor shows 
 itself. In mobility of expression his countenance is 
 extraordinary, almost unique. In Hamlet the scene 
 with the flutes, as interpreted by him, was a masterpiece. 
 The audience greeted it with a storm of applause. The 
 play-scene was quite overwhelming in its effect. Booth's 
 quick transition from wild laughter to choking agony 
 is an achievement of startling power in the school of 
 realistic sstheticism. His action in the passage that 
 involves Yorick's skull may be noted as of kindred 
 character. The vital treatment extends to the most 
 minute details." 
 
 From the Unterhaltungs-Blatt der Berliner Presse. 
 
 "Here and there we should have liked more dramatic 
 power, but this Hamlet is totally unlike any German 
 Hamlet that ever we saw, and we are inclined to say 
 that Edwin Booth is Hamlet by the grace of God and of 
 Shakspeare — that a ray of the light which inspired the 
 great Englishman in his creation has also inspired this 
 actor. You may, if you like, wrangle over the inter- 
 pretation of the character. Hamlet presents itself to 
 the mind of every actor differently. A creation, im- 
 measurable as the wide world, admits of the largest and 
 most varied exposition. This granted, Booth is a phe- 
 nomenal artist. He is the most sombre of all stage 
 Hamlets; but his understanding of the part and the 
 manner in which he evolves it are so full of light and 
 clearness that all commentaries upon this difficult 
 character appear superfluous. There is an infinite 
 charm in the acting of this artist, so simple, so noble 
 and free from all attempts at mere effect. Even in 
 
38 HAMLET. 
 
 moments of the highest passion he never oversteps the 
 boundary lines of the beautiful. He is always ' every 
 inch a king.' " 
 
 From the Vossische Zeitung. 
 
 "But how is it possible to enumerate in detail the 
 striking, delicate, touching and charming points of this 
 interpretation, — the irony toward Polonius, the interest 
 in the grave-digger^ the desperate hilarity during and 
 after the play-scene, the deep pathos in the meeting with 
 his mother, — which we regard as the climax of Booth's 
 performance ! A temperament of singular purity, fea- 
 tures of infinite capacity for expression, a captivating 
 voice (which only at minor points was not altogether 
 free from mannerism), place the impersonations of 
 Booth among the most attractive and life-like that could 
 be conceived." 
 
 From the Staatsbiirger Zeitung. 
 
 " Very unjustly, it appears, do we allow ourselves to 
 be suspicious of works of art which originate in America. 
 The 'puffing' by which, as a rule, they are heralded, 
 repels us from them. Then, too, the impression which 
 we derive from hearing of the materialistic tendencies of 
 life in America and of the technical character of the 
 culture which is said to dominate all minds in that coun- 
 try, is perplexing and well calculated to mislead. How 
 can the eminently practical American, we ask, — he that 
 is said to have ropes for nerves, — be in sympathy with 
 the most subtle character that a poet ever created? 
 The spiritual, sublimated Hamlet soul, with all its 
 nervous, dream-like and melancholy attributes, — how 
 can this be conceived by such a man ? 
 
 " For an answer, look at Edwin Booth. True, genu- 
 ine, profound feeling it is which he brings into play, and 
 which captivates and awakens our enthusiasm. He is 
 guided by artistic instinct, he is free from all excesses, 
 he is discreet, and always moves on the lines of true 
 
EDWIN BOOTH. 
 
HAMLET. 39 
 
 beauty. Over all the passion that burns with consum- 
 ing flame in his bosom, over all the dark despair of a 
 brooding soul, rises still, — distinct and supreme, — the 
 tender, gentle, perhaps bitter, but always refined mel- 
 ancholy of his dominant intellect. Mr. Booth's acting of 
 Hamlet places him, among German interpreters of this 
 character, at the side of Joseph Wagner and Emil Dev- 
 rient. The latter — one of the most famous, — Booth 
 seems to surpass in diversity and incisiveness. His wit 
 and irony, in the scenes with Polonius and the courtiers, 
 are quicker, and his manner toward Horatio, Ophelia 
 and the mother is more winningr " 
 
 o 
 
 From the Berliner Fremdenblatt. 
 
 " Booth seems to take the cue for his conception of 
 Hamlet from the lines beginning the monologue: ' O 
 that this too, too solid flesh would melt ! ' His spirit is 
 rebellious against the cumbersome body, and ever de- 
 sirous to ' shuffle off this mortal coil.' Throughout the 
 almost death-like calm which pervades his being, a fiery 
 longing to escape the burden imposed upon him by Fate 
 seems to agitate the innermost recesses of his nature. 
 Splendid outbursts of impassioned eloquence, prompted 
 by this struggle, thrill the hearer's very soul. The won- 
 derful play of Booth's face, and the soul-searching 
 glances from the burning depths of his dark eyes, en- 
 thral the hearts of his auditors, even though the words 
 he speaks may be in a language not familiar to all. 
 The verdict of the public of Berlin agrees with that of 
 all former judges of Mr. Booth's Hamlet in pronouncing 
 it a masterpiece of the actor's genius, grand in its im- 
 posing quietude, towering above all his rivals in its pas- 
 sionate utterances and beautified into a stage-figure of 
 fascinating proportions by the consummate grace of its 
 representative. 
 
 " Of perfections there seem to be so many, of faults 
 so few, that we do not know to what portion of the part 
 as he renders it we should accord the most unqualified 
 
40 HAMLET. 
 
 praise. Never did an actor succeed so admirably in- 
 painting alike the noble dignity and the isxquisite humor 
 of the philosophic Hamlet. And what shall I say of the 
 fencing-scene, — that apotheosis of grace? Was ever 
 more delightful play witnessed in any of our play-houses^ 
 by any one of our great actors, past or present? When, 
 has death been portrayed more faithfully yet less re- 
 voltingly? The curtain fell upon the most wonderful 
 impersonation of Hamlet that Berlin has ever seen, — an, 
 impersonation in which dignified grace, exquisite humor,, 
 stupendous passion of delivery and the sublime power 
 of genius were all blended. This Hamlet was not 
 played, but lived. And so forever he will live in the 
 memory of his enraptured listeners. Mr. Booth, amid 
 spontaneous outbursts of applause, was called upon the 
 scene, and at the close of the acts, no less than twenty- 
 four times." 
 
 As among the latest and ripest opinions may be given; 
 that of William Winter, in the New York Tribune, 
 November 5, 1889, at the time Mr. Booth was playing: 
 with Modjeska: 
 
 "Edwin Booth was never at any time inclined, when- - 
 impersonating Hamlet, to employ those theatrical expe- 
 dients that startle an audience, and diffuse nervous, 
 excitement. He shows himself to be less inclined to 
 them than ever, now. Except at the delirious moment 
 when the Prince rushes upon the arras and stabs. through 
 it the hidden spy whom he wildly hopes is the King, his. 
 acting was never diverted from that mood of intellectual 
 self-concentration which essentially is the condition of 
 Hamlet In that moment his burst of frenzied eager- 
 ness — half horror, and half-exultant delight — liberated 
 the passion that smoulders beneath Hamlet's calm, and 
 it was irresistibly enthralling. There were indications 
 of the same passion in the delivery of the soliloquy 
 upon the artificial grief of the player, at the climax of 
 
HAMLET. 41 
 
 the play-scene, and in the half-lunatic rant over Ophelia's 
 grave. But these variations only served to deepen the 
 darkness of misery with which his embodiment of Hamlet 
 is saturated, and the gloomy grandeur of the haunted 
 atmosphere in which it is swathed. 
 
 "Now, as always hitherto, Edwin Booth's ideal of 
 Hamlet is an entirely noble person overwhelmed with a 
 fatal grief, which he endures for the most part with a 
 patient sweetness that is deeply pathetic, but which 
 sometimes drives him into delirium and must inevitably 
 cause his death. In his expression of this ideal, which 
 is true to Shakspeare, he has never yet gone as far as 
 Shakspeare's text would warrant. He has never yet 
 allowed his votaries to see Hamlet as Ophelia saw him, 
 in that hour of eloquent revelation when- — without 
 artifice and in the unpremeditated candor of involuntary 
 sincerity — his ravaged Jnd blighted figure stood before 
 her in all the pitiable disorder of self-abandoned sorrow. 
 To show Hamlet in that way would be to show him 
 exactly as he is in Shakspeare ; but in a theatrical 
 representation that expedient, while it might gratify the 
 few, would certainly repel the many. Real grief is not 
 attractive, and the grief of Hamlet is real ; it is not 
 simply a filial sorrow for the death of his beloved father ; 
 a mournful shame at his mother's hasty marriage with 
 his uncle ; an affliction of the haunted soul because it 
 knows that his father's spirit is condemned to fast in 
 fires and to walk the night. It is deeper than all these. 
 It is an elemental misery, coexistent with his being ; 
 coincident with his conviction of the utter fatuity of all 
 this world and with his mental paralysis of comprehen- 
 sion, awe-stricken and half insane, in presence of the 
 unfathomable misery that environs man's spiritual life. 
 Entirely and literally to embody the man whose nature 
 is convulsed in this way would be to oppress an audience 
 with what few persons understand and most persons 
 deem intolerable, — the reality of sorrow. Hamlet upon 
 the stage must be interesting, and, in a certain sense, he 
 
42 HAMLET. 
 
 must be brilliant ; and Edwin Booth has also made him 
 so. But this noble actor, so fine in his intuitions, so just 
 in his methods, cannot be otherwise than true to his 
 artistic conscience. He embodies Hamlet not simply as 
 the picturesque and interesting central figure in a story 
 of intrigue, half amatory and half poHtical, in an 
 ancient royal court, but as the representative type of 
 man at his higher point of development, vainly con- 
 trasting the darkness and doubt that enshroud him in 
 this weak, pain-stricken, transitory, mortal state, and 
 (because his vision is too comprehensive, his heart too 
 tender and his will too weak for the circumstances of 
 human life) going to his death at last, broken, dejected, 
 baffled, a mystery among mysteries, and a complete and 
 disastrous failure, but glorious through it all, and 
 infinitely more precious to those who even vaguely 
 comprehend his drift, than the most successful man that 
 ever was drawn. 
 
 " Treating Hamlet in this spirit Edwin Booth is not con- 
 tent merely to invest him with symmetry of form, poetry 
 of motion, statuesque grace of pose, and the exquisite 
 beauty of musical elocution, and to blend these gracious 
 attributes with dignity of mind and spontaneous and 
 unerring refinement of temperament and manner. He 
 goes much further, because he illuminesthe whole figure 
 with a tremulous light of agonized vitality. This is the 
 true Hamlet, in whose bosom burns the fire that is not 
 quenched." 
 
 EDWIN BOOTH AS HAMLET. 
 [A. S. in New York Telegram.'\ 
 
 The curtain rises. This is Elsinore, 
 
 And this the noble Dane; 
 The long, long centuries have backward rolled. 
 
 And Hamlet lives again : 
 He lives in all his beauty and his grace, 
 
 A man — a king 'mong men ; 
 His great dark eyes, and haughty, clear-cut face 
 
 Shine on us now as tlfen. 
 
HAMLET. 43 
 
 He moves us by his genius and his power 
 
 To smiles or tears at will; 
 We listen to his voice, — that thrilling voice, 
 
 I seem to hear it still : 
 Our souls are stirred with pity at his grief. 
 
 Our eyes with tears grow dim, 
 And as he weaves his spell around us here 
 
 Our hearts go out to him. 
 
 Oh, fair Ophelia ! happy woman thou 
 
 For but one hour to be ; 
 Even though it brought thee pain and early death. 
 
 Beloved by such as he : 
 Ah, well, when years have passed above my head, 
 
 And stolen my youth away, 
 Some other maid may actor praise or blame. 
 
 Then I, with truth, shall say : — 
 
 There is no actor living now, my child, 
 
 Like him who in my youth. 
 Did tread the stage, and bear away the palm ; 
 
 There's none like Edwin Booth : 
 A man of generous heart, noble and true. 
 
 His life was good and pure; 
 He won and kept the homage of the rich, 
 
 The blessings of the poor." 
 
 t 
 
 Salvini (born 1833), the greatest living actor of what 
 may be called the barbaric roles, has never made the 
 impression in Hamlet that he has in some characters. 
 
 George Henry Lewes wrote of him, in 1875 : 
 
 " It was not Shakspeare's Hamlet, one must admit ; 
 the many-sidedness of that strange character was sadly 
 truncated ; the wit, the princely gaiety which momentarily 
 plays over the abiding gloom, the vacillating infirmity 
 of purpose, the intellectual over-activity were conspicu- 
 ous by their absence. Nevertheless, I think, of all the 
 Hamlets I have seen, Salvini's is the least disappointing. 
 The scenes with the Ghost erred, I think, psychologi- 
 cally in depicting physical terror, but this is the universal 
 defect, and Salvini's terror was finely expressed. The 
 soliloquies were quiet and were real soliloquies, except 
 that every now and then too much was itahcized, and 
 
44 HAMLET. 
 
 painted out, so that he seemed less one communing 
 with himself than one illustrating his meaning to a 
 listener." 
 
 London Athenceum (1875) : 
 
 " No actor of our day has brought to the part of 
 Hamlet equal intelligence and mastery of art, equal 
 ripeness of judgment and perfection of method. The 
 world has seen Hamlets in which the execution was 
 masterly while the conception was so weak as to be dis- 
 honoring to Shakspeare. Such was, in some respects, 
 the Hamlet of Fechter. No charge of this kind can be 
 brought against Signer Salvini. His Hamlet is fine in 
 conception ; the only room for doubt is whether it is in 
 all respects the Hamlet Shakspeare drew. His bearing 
 before the Ghost; his manner of watching the King 
 during the play-scene ; his delirium as he throws into 
 the air the loose leaves of his manuscript he has kept 
 during the performance ; his treatment of his mother ; 
 his recoil upon the reappearance of his father; his duel 
 with Laertes, and his dying scene with the keen craving 
 of a weak nature for those demonstrations of human 
 sympathy which stronger spirits would scorn, — are 
 splendid proofs of the combination of intellectual 
 capacity and physical means." 
 
 Henry Irving (1838), while in the stock company at 
 the Theatre Royal, Manchester, first played Hamlet, 
 June 20, 1 864, for his benefit. October 3 1 , 1 874, he first 
 appeared in Hamlet, in London, an event for which 
 the crowd began to assemble around the entrance to 
 the pit of the Lyceum at three o'clock in the afternoon. 
 His success was so great in this character that he gave 
 it 200 consecutive representations, the run ending June 
 29, 1875. 
 
HAMLET. 45 
 
 Says Brereton, his biographer : 
 
 " He wore no elaborate trappings or funeral velvet, 
 no flaxen wig like that adopted by Charles Fechter ; 
 the order of the Danish elephant was absent. He ap- 
 peared simply as a man and a prince, clothed in thick- 
 ribbed silk, and a paletot edged with fur, a rich but sim- 
 ple costume, relieved only by a massive gold chain. 
 His face wore a troubled, wearied expression ; the dis- 
 ordered black hair was carelessly thrown over the forehead, 
 and the marvelous eye of the actor told of his distracted 
 mind. But so subtle was the actor's art, so daring his 
 originality, that almost two acts of the play were allowed 
 to pass in silence before the audience began to under- 
 stand him. After the scene with the Ghost, Mr. Irving 
 came off the stage depressed, not by the silence of the 
 audience, but by the thought that he had not reached 
 his ideal. To use his own words, ' I felt that the audi- 
 ence did not go with me until the first meeting with 
 Ophelia, when they changed toward me entirely.' From 
 this point in the play his personation was recognized as 
 the most human Hamlet that the audience had ever 
 known, and the delighted spectators were loud in their 
 applause, even at a quarter to one in the morning. 
 
 " Henry Irving shows a Hamlet of a highly nervous 
 and sensitive disposition ; a student, an artist, and a 
 gentleman, born to great things, happy in the love of his 
 parents and the confident attachment of a young and 
 guileless woman, who, by a sudden turn of extraordinary 
 misfortune, is forced to take arms against a sea of 
 troubles. The terrible events which occur have the 
 effect of unhinging the man's mind, but have no power 
 to alter his nature. He is overwhelmed, he is distressed, 
 he is irritable, he is reflective, he talks to himself, the 
 strain on the nervous system is almost too great for human 
 -nature to bear, but nothing can alter the inherent dis- 
 position of Hamlet. He must always be a gentleman, 
 ~he must always be soft and tender to women ; when he 
 ^ees Ophelia, his clouded face is illumined with the sun 
 
46 HAMLET. 
 
 of passion ; when they allude to his mother as contradis- 
 tinct from his uncle, Hamlet rises from his seat — the re- 
 fined gentleman. More than this, it is impossible for 
 Hamlet to be cruel, wilfully and deliberately. He is too 
 sensitive, too highly cultured and too feminine in his es- 
 sence. There is nothing whatever cruel in the nature of 
 Hamlet as illustrated by Henry Irving. He can do 
 terrible things when irritated to madness, when he is set 
 upon, trapped and abused ; but, like many of us, he 
 cannot be desperate unless he is in a passion ; he can- 
 not fight in cold blood; he is ever meditating, planning, 
 arguing, soliloquizing, and discussing his plan of action. 
 But he cannot screw his courage to the sticking point. 
 He has not a Lady Macbeth by his side to urge him on 
 to murder. He has no one but his conscience, and 
 arguments with conscience are seldom decisive. He 
 can become bitterly satirical to Ophelia when he dis- 
 covers the infamous plot to which she has lent herself, 
 and when he knows he is being watched from behind 
 the arras. He can be excessively rude to Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern when he discovers that their friend- 
 ship is a gross deception and a snare. He can kill 
 Polonius when he is urged to desperation, and when the 
 curtain will hide his eyes from the murder ; but he can- 
 not kill the King at his prayers, and can only accomplish 
 it when Hamlet is an actor in a murderous scene of 
 bloodshed, and must per force take his man with the 
 rest. Higher even than this Hamlet's hatred of cruelty 
 is his intense heart. Probably no Hamlet who has yet 
 appeared, so thoroughly brought out, as Mr. Irving did, 
 the love for Ophelia, the devotion to his mother, and 
 the warm attachment to his friend Horatio." [These 
 three points were specially strong with Fechter.] 
 
 On becoming the lessee of the Lyceum Theatre, Mr. 
 Irving produced Hamlet as the opening attraction 
 (December 30, 1878), Miss Ellen Terry then playing 
 
WILSON BARRETT. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 47 
 
 Ophelia for the first time. It ran for io8 nights and 
 was one of the best productions, certainly so far as 
 scenery and minor parts was concerned, that the tragedy 
 has ever had. " The performance you have seen to- 
 night," said Mr. Irving, after the curtain had fallen, 
 " has been the dream of my life." 
 
 Wilson Barrett played Hamlet at the Princess's Theatre, 
 London, of which he was the manager, October i6, 
 1884, and, owing to many innovations, the performance 
 elicited considerable discussion. A fundamental differ- 
 ence from the preceding Hamlets was in changing the 
 age of the Prince, who is usually assumed to be about 
 thirty, to ten years younger. 
 
 Dramatic Notes, October, 1884: 
 
 " Mr. Barrett's Hamlet is a quick, impetuous piece of 
 acting, and if we are to accept Hamlet, as being nearer 
 twenty than thirty years of age, it is a fine rendering 
 of the character. But the sad, dreamy, poetical Hamlet 
 is lost sight of in Mr. Barrett's terribly earnest, 
 determined and youthful hero. In many respects his 
 Hamlet is like Charles Mayne Young's, one of the most 
 popular Hamlets at the beginning of the century. 
 Young's great hits were made in the play-scene and 
 in the fencing-bout, where his nature was better suited 
 than in the scenes with Ophelia and his mother. These 
 lacked tenderness and were given with a great show of 
 irritability that was bad in contrast to the pathos and 
 tenderness of previous Hamlets in them. His Hamlet 
 was, as is Mr. Barrett's, fiery and impetuous. Mr. Bar- 
 rett has given to the stage, for the first time, the tragedy 
 as Shakspeare wrote it, in as perfect a form as is possi- 
 ble, within the Hmits of the stage." 
 
48 HAMLET. 
 
 Clement Scott, in the Theatre, November, 1884: 
 "To sum up. It is an admirable, clever, vigorous, 
 rapid and eminently unstagy performance, destitute of 
 trick, full, eloquent and unconventional ; but it starts no 
 tears to the eyes and causes no pulsation to the heart. 
 I was carried along ; I had no time to think, so rapid 
 was the actor's manner, but I was unmoved throughout. 
 I wondered, but I was not stirred. My interest was ex- 
 cited, but never my imagination." 
 
 Rossi (1829), the Itahan actor who visited this coun- 
 try in 1 88 1-2, is beheved to have done more to make 
 popular the play of Hamlet in Italy, Spain, Portugal 
 and South America than any other actor, and he is with- 
 out question one of the most remarkable representatives 
 of the title role. The critics differed in this country as 
 to his exact standing, the believers that only an English- 
 speaking Hamlet can possibly act the character, doing 
 him scant justice, to say the least. Others saw a wonder- 
 ful piece of acting, and not a few believe that he is 
 to-day the best of all the living Hamlets. Two totally 
 dissimilar views are here given : 
 
 Mr. A. C. Wheeler (Nym_ Crinkle) says : 
 
 " Much as I liked his Othello and his Romeo, his 
 Hamlet was, to my thinking, eveh superior in intelligent 
 grasp of the subject, in harmonious and effective pictur- 
 ing of the character, and in the vivid, earnest and 
 beautiful illustration that it received in what is techni- 
 cally called the stage-business. Signor Rossi's Hamlet 
 is a sad, reflective Prince, but the actor does not, there- 
 fore, make him a mooning, semi-idiot. He is full of 
 the impulses and desires of hot blood, but his purpose 
 is irresolute. He will have none of the dreaming. 
 
HAMLET. 49 
 
 spooning, whining, maundering, moon-calfing treatment 
 of the text. He acts it hke a man Hving in an age of 
 intense physical action, and not like a poet just out of 
 the Waverley Magazine. When he questions Heaven in 
 the ' to be or not to be ' soliloquy, it is not the plaint of 
 a weak sensibility, but the interrogation of a strong 
 intellect that comes of strong blood. When he meets 
 the, ghost of his father, he meets with a shock — all the 
 superstition, all the love, all the humanity of him escape 
 in a wild piercing cry. And while listening to it, he is 
 torn by every appeal, dismayed by every revelation and 
 agonized by every charge, for he is wholly man. But 
 all through this scene he preserves the air of awe and 
 reverence. 
 
 " Its merit as a piece of acting compares with the 
 other Hamlets that we have had lately as a torso of 
 Raphael's compares with a face of Daubigny's. In 
 one are all the infinite details that give character to 
 flesh. The inner soul seems to come through it in its 
 thousand shifting half shadows. In the other is the 
 smooth blandness of mere color without anatomy. In 
 his treatment of Ophelia, his tenderness was dashed 
 with a sadness that was peculiarly effective. And in 
 the picture-scene with his mother, he gave melodramatic 
 energy to the scene by dashing the miniature under his 
 feet in a paroxysm of contempt and rage. It was so 
 well done ; was so natural in its forcefulness and grace- 
 ful in its motions that the house broke out with applause. 
 
 " The killing of the King was not at all to the taste of 
 the English tradition-keepers. It was too pictorial, too 
 much like real killing, which realism is not poetry, 
 according to the purists." 
 
 Mr. WiUiam Winter says : 
 
 " Most persons, certainly, whatever may be the reason, 
 prefer their Melancholy Dane without a superabundance 
 of adipose tissue. Signor Rossi, like the late Mr. Fechter, 
 presents him in a state of bulk that is almost rubicund; 
 
s° 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 and, also like the late Mr. Fechter, he invests him with 
 a prodigious impetuosity of temperament, such as must 
 have terminated the dynasty of uncle Claudius in con- 
 siderably less time than it takes to read the play. Aside 
 from these qualifications — which mean that he neither 
 looks like Hamlet nor assumes the spirit of Hamlet — 
 Signor Rossi gives, under this name, a piece of melo- 
 dramatic acting which is remarkably brilliant, and which, 
 to an audience of Italians, must be at least usefully sug- 
 gestive of the great and wonderful original of Shaks- 
 peare. The character of Hamlet, as it stands ia the 
 English language, is an ideal of mournful beauty, a: type 
 of perfect nobleness in man, and of supfeme exaltation 
 in state, but blighted by affliction and griSCd^azed and 
 partly demented by the strong and terrible; shpck of a 
 supernatural visitation, and overwhelmed b)?4the stern 
 pressure of a fearful duty — to which not only a distressing 
 experience but innate incertitude and a purposeless, 
 fitful, bewildered, agonized spirit render the faculties 
 inadequate. Such a personality is easily imagined, but 
 it is not easily embodied. Good Hamlets, if it were, 
 would be. as thick on the stage as bananas on the stem, 
 and, happily, there would ;be no further call for the 
 discussion of a tiresome subject. But the problem for 
 the actor is here unspeakably difKcult. He must conquer, 
 not by deed but by condition ; not by what he does, 
 but by what he is. The Hamlet spirit — the introspective, 
 brooding, infinitely dejected, pathetic spirit of a great 
 mind overwhelmed by the mystery of the universe, and 
 by the strange, forlorn state of man, and contemplative 
 of suicide before yet anything has occurred that is at all 
 unusual in human experience — must shine through him, 
 to dominate and enthrall. That being present, the rest 
 is a natural sequence. That being absent, the rest is 
 mere soulless mechanics. The observer of Signor 
 Rossi's Hamlet sees, in the thing that is done, not a man 
 of dreams and visions, but a man of resolute will and 
 spirited activity. This may be an excellent Italian ideal, 
 
HAMLET. 51 
 
 but it is not English, and it is not Shakspeare ; nor is 
 tile essential falseness of the ideal redeemed, for an 
 Enghsh-speaking audience, by Signor Rossi's incontest- 
 ably brilliant display of technical proficiency. In brief, 
 Signor Rossi applied realism to poetry, and realism 
 applied to Hamlet is a desecration of all art and all 
 propriety. In comparison with this Hamlet, the elderly 
 and antique Hamlets of Barry Sullivan and William 
 Creswick become positively noble, while that of the 
 late E. L. Davenport towers into sublimity." 
 
 There have been many Hamlets of whom only brief 
 mention can be made. One who was much admired in 
 this country, and who is still remembered and believed 
 by many to be one of the best ever seen upon the stage, 
 was E. L. Davenport. Less attention was paid to his 
 delineation than to others less worthy, and the record 
 in regard to it is far from being full or satisfactory. In 
 August, 1875, he played the part at the Grand Opera 
 House, in New York, Barry Sullivan appearing in the 
 same character at Booth's Theatre, on the same even- 
 ings. Mr. Sullivan is an Irish actor, and an attempt 
 was made on the part of his managers to arouse a 
 national feeling in his behalf. His Hamlet was in strik- 
 ing contrast to the gentle, scholarly personation of 
 Davenport. Lawrence Barrett has frequently played 
 Hamlet in years gone by, giving it a restless, spirited 
 and rapid turn, not generally accepted as the ideal 
 Dane. He has played every male part in Hamlet ex- 
 cept Polonius, and First Grave-digger. Mr. Hutton says 
 Barrett has played Laertes to the Hamlet of Charlotte 
 Cushman, the Ghost to Edwin Booth and Davenport, 
 
52 HAMLET. 
 
 Horatio to Murdoch, etc. Edwin Adams was a satis- 
 factory Hamlet of a few years ago. Frank Mayo has 
 an excellent conception of the part. Louis James and 
 Robert Mantel! have recently aspired to the character. 
 Among foreigners who have played Hamlet in New York 
 and elsewhere, in this country, are to be mentioned 
 Bandmann, Bogumil-Dawson, Barnay and Hasse. 
 
 Another quotation from William Winter is in order 
 
 here : 
 
 " Stage-experience has long ago settled that unless 
 even the best of actors has peculiar fitness for Hamlet 
 he should not undertake it. Technical proficiency does 
 not suffice. In this part, of all others, " the many fail, 
 the one succeeds." George Frederick Cooke, a great 
 Richard, must have been, for physical reasons, offensive 
 in Hamlet ; Forrest, a great Othello, was one of the most 
 obnoxious Hamlets ever seen. The elder Booth's 
 Hamlet never stood out like his Richard and Sir Giles. 
 John McCullough — matchless in the heroic parts, and 
 the finest Virginius since Macready — always seemed con- 
 strained and at self-variance, in the Melancholy Dane. 
 Hazlitt, as readers know, complains that even the great 
 Kemble (that majestic figure in Sir Thomas Lawrence's 
 picture!) acted him like a man in armor. Yet these 
 are the names of giants in the annals of the stage. The 
 lesson thus implied is not without significance. Though 
 it be true that Hamlet must be made, it is first of all 
 essential that he should be born." 
 
 And a writer in the New York Sun says : 
 
 " There have been many who have played Hamlets, 
 from Garrick down to Anna Dickinson ; but who can be 
 Hamlet, or ever was Hamlet? Who can think, dream, 
 study, learn, love and smile, rejoice or sorrow, in pro- 
 portion as the passing hour is ih harmony with his ideal 
 
HAMLET. 53 
 
 of heaven and of humanity, as he does? But of the 
 conventional Hamlets as they have been, Mr. Booth 
 appears to us the best of our time. He may not carry 
 out the traditions of Garrick's Hamlet; he is not the 
 sensible and lonely Hamlet of Kemble, nor the Hamlet 
 of polished perception and melodious elocution of 
 Young, nor the Hamlet of Devrient, who, perhaps, 
 grasped the ideal of Hamlet more closely than any 
 actor of his time ; but to us he is far the best of our 
 time. Though Fechter, with his fair flaxen wig, full 
 figure, and tearful visage, came nearer being the real 
 Hamlet, as he is pictured, Mr. Booth, with his pale, 
 handsome presence, round which a poetic perfume 
 hangs, his brilliant eye, his sad and thoughtful air, his 
 graceful carriage and gracious mien, seems to us to 
 realize more than any of the Hamlets of our time, or 
 perhaps even except Devrient, of the past, many men's, 
 and especially women's, fancy Hamlet." 
 
 The first recorded performance of Hamlet in America, 
 was in Philadelphia, July 27, 1759, Lewis Hallam in 
 the title role (Seilhamer's " History of the American 
 Theatre"). Mr. Douglass played the Ghost, Mrs. 
 Harman, Ophelia. The first recorded performance in 
 New York was November 26, 1761 ; Mr. Hallam as 
 Hamlet, Mr. Douglass as the King, Mr. Quelch as the 
 Qhost, and Mrs. Morris as Ophelia. 
 
 Mr. Laurence Hutton, in "A Century of Hamlet," 
 published in Harper's Magazine, mentions the following 
 actors who are known to have played the part in New 
 York in the hundred years preceding November 26, 
 1861: 
 
 "Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, James Fennell, John 
 Howard Payne (the first American-born Hamlet), Ed- 
 mund Kean, Junius Brutus Booth, George Holman, 
 
54 HAMLET. 
 
 James William Wallack, Robert Campbell Maywood, 
 John Jay Adams, William Augustus Conway, Thomas 
 Hamblin, William Charles Macready, John R. Duff, 
 Charles Kemble, Charles Kean, Edwin Forrest, Edward 
 Eddy, John McCuUough, George Vandenhoff, Edwin L. 
 Davenport, Barry Sullivan, McKean Buchanan, Charles 
 Carroll Hicks, James E. Murdoch, Edwin Booth, Law- 
 rence Barrett, William Abbott, Augustus A. Addams, 
 J. R. Anderson, George J. Arnold, Mr. Barton, Mr. 
 Bartow, Frederick Brown, John H. Clarke, Mr. Clason, 
 Henry J. Finn, W. C. Forbes, Richard Graham, H, P. 
 Grattan, James H. Hackett, Henry Erskine Johnstone, 
 William Horace Keppell, H. Loraine, W. Marshall, J. 
 A. J. Neafie, John R. Oxley, William Pelby, Charles 
 Dibdin Pitt, J. B. Roberts, John R. Scott, James Stark, 
 Henry Wallack, Wilmarth Waller." 
 
 Since the days of the boy-actresses it has not been 
 recorded that any man has attempted to play Opheha, 
 but the instances where women have donned the inky 
 cloak of Hamlet are many. Most, if not all, these 
 attempts have been ill-advised. The character is not 
 better suited to woman than is that of Richard HI. or 
 of lago, of which there are also recorded instances of 
 female ambition to fill. Charlotte Cushman, who from 
 her masculine temperament played Romeo fairly well, 
 essayed Hamlet, but there is no recorded success fo.r 
 her in the character. Where she failed others might 
 well take warning, but there are on the list of female 
 Hamlets the following: Eliza ShaAv, Fanny Wallack, 
 Charlotte Barnes, Clara Fisher, Miss Marriott, Emma 
 Waller, Susan Denin, Mrs. F. B. Conway, Julia Sea- 
 man, Winnetta Montague, Adele Belgarde, Louise 
 Pomeroy, Anna Dickinson. 
 
HAMLET. SS 
 
 William Winter : 
 
 " Charlotte Cushman used to play Hamlet, but even 
 Charlotte Cushman only played it once in a while, and 
 never was esteemed in it as more than a curiosity. For 
 abnegation of sex her Cardinal Wolsey, and not her 
 Hamlet, is the work to be remembered. Eliza Shaw 
 was better in it, but still better out of it, and made her 
 fame as a woman and not a man. Charlotte Barnes, 
 with her frail physique and mournful, wandering eyes, 
 languished through it with tolerable effect. Stalwart 
 Miss Marriott stalked about in it and was gloomily comic. 
 Miss Julia Seaman made a jack-knife effort with it on 
 one ghastly night at Booth's Theatre a few years ago. 
 And it is not very long since the Melancholy Dane was 
 more melancholy than usual in the exhibition made of 
 him at Niblo's Garden by Miss Belgarde. Alas, poor 
 Hamlet ! It was a bad day for the glass of fashion when 
 the essayists began to call him ' feminine ' and the ladies 
 found it out." 
 
 HAMLET ON THE FRENCH STAGE. 
 
 Hamlet has occasionally been played on the French 
 stage, although it can scarcely be considered adapted to 
 the national taste. It was performed in Paris in 1 847, 
 and again twenty years later. In 1886 it had two 
 representations in the gay capital, one at the Porte 
 Saint Martin, by Sarah Bernhardt who played Ophelia, 
 M. Gamier appearing in the title role. 
 
 Joseph Knight thus speaks of it: 
 
 "The play opens with the court-scene; the tradi- 
 tions of the English stage, so far as dressing is con- 
 cerned, are closely followed. Polonius is a garrulous 
 and cheerful old gossip, caring less for his dignity than 
 
56 HAMLET. 
 
 for a hearing, and completely enamored of his own wit. 
 Garnier is a handsome, well-built, manly fellow enough, 
 with blonde hair a la Fechter, and with an easy bearing 
 and picturesque appearance. Like his predecessor 
 Fechter, M. Garnier mistakes Hamlet for an amorous 
 jeune premier. No such insight as was displayed by 
 Fechter, is shown, however, and the performance 
 lacks the beauty, gallantry and color which in Fechter 
 disposed one to pardon the absence of any adequate 
 conception of the character. M. Garnier, in fact, is 
 not Hamlet at all. In the scenes with Ophelia he is 
 at times tender ; in the presence of the Ghost he bears 
 himself with a fair show of filial reverence ; Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern are treated with a certain measure of 
 sarcasm ; the King in the play-scene is glared at with 
 sufficient ferocity, and the Queen is sufficiently lectured 
 with exemplary indignation. So the performance pro- 
 gresses until a poorly fought duel and a grotesque 
 slaughter of the King brings to an end an impersona- 
 tion respectable as a display of physical resources, but 
 otherwise of no account." 
 
 Mr. Knight, while acknowledging the art of Bern- 
 hardt in her rendition of Ophelia, does not think highly 
 of the conception, and considers the representation, 
 from the English stand-point, a failure. The more strik- 
 ing features of her treatment of the character are noted 
 elsewhere. The version used was by MM. Cressonnois 
 and Samson. It omitted the advice of Hamlet to the 
 players, and cut out Osric ; Hamlet does not follow the 
 Ghost, but _ Horatio and Marcellus withdraw; in the 
 Queen's chamber the full-length panel picture of the 
 dead King becomes endowed with life and glides across 
 the room as the Ghost. Ophelia is carried in person on 
 her bier, and the play closes with the appearance of 
 
HAMLET. 57 
 
 Fortinbras, who has not been seen on the English- 
 speaking stage these many years. 
 
 The Hamlet produced a little later the same year at 
 the Theatre Frangais (Sept. 28), was the older version 
 of the elder Dumas and Paul Meurice, altered by the 
 survivor, Meurice. The original idea of the adapters 
 was to improve on Shakspeare by changing the ending 
 so as to make Hamlet escape the ordeal untouched by 
 the poisoned foil, and as the others were expiring, the 
 Ghost once more made his appearance. He pardoned 
 his wife, but consigned the guilty King to the lower 
 regions. Then Hamlet, confessing his want of firmness, 
 asked his father what punishment was in store for him, 
 to which the Ghost replied, " Tu vivras," and the curtain 
 fell. In the revival, however, this ending was omitted. 
 The play opened on the platform of the castle. After 
 Horatio makes his revelation about the Ghost to Hamlet, 
 the latter recovers from his amazement sufficiently to 
 have a little flirtation with Ophelia, through an interpola- 
 tion of the French, concluding with a formal declaration 
 of love, and handing to her the sonnet, " Doubt thou the 
 stars are fire?" The cast in the principal part was as follows : 
 Hamlet, Mounet-Sully ; Polonius, Got; Horatio, Baillet ; 
 King, Silvain ; Ghost, Maubant ; Grave-digger, Coquelin; 
 Opheha, Mile. Reichemberg; Queen, Mme. Agar. 
 
 Edmund Yates : 
 
 " It has been my fate during a-life of play-going to 
 see a good deal of Hamlet. My memory recalls Charles 
 Kean, a somewhat sulky and savage young prince, but 
 full of dignity and with many fine touches of tragic 
 power ; James Wallack, light and airy, with an incli- 
 nation to slap the Ghost on the back, and make the best 
 
S8 HAMLET. 
 
 of the late King's unfortunate ending; Walter Mont- 
 gomery, virulent but vulgar, energetic but decidedly- 
 provincial; McKean Buchanan, a very tall American, 
 the first, in my recollection, to give the reading a hawk 
 from a heron — pshaw ! though I see Barry Sullivan 
 claims it ; Barry Sullivan himself, closely studied on the 
 old models, intelligent, effective; G. V. Brooke, a 
 magnificent declaimer, but ponderous and porter-y; a 
 number of stock tragedians of whom nothing need be 
 said. Then Fechter, the very pride and pearl of poetry, 
 fair-haired, impassioned; sounding every note in the 
 gamut of love, hate, revenge, scorn, filial reverence and 
 desperate frenzy, but with an impossible accent which 
 went well-nigh to rob the indubitably great creation of 
 its charm; Henry Irving, scholarly, most artistic, most 
 interesting. Also did I see that extraordinary perfor- 
 mance, such a strange vagary on the part of poor J. M. 
 Bellew, who stood at a desk before the proscenium and 
 declaimed the speeches of all the characters in turn, 
 while the persons of the drama, mere human marionettes, 
 trod the stage with appropriate gestures, and moved 
 their lips as though they were speaking. I thought this 
 the most ludicrous thing I had ever witnessed. I do 
 not think so now: I have seen 'Amlate — as they pro- 
 nounce it — at the Fran^ais. 
 
 " Ah, ce pauvre Sckak-is-pire ! He has a little line 
 on- the bill and in the book, but fades into insignificance 
 beside the type allotted to Alexandre Dumas and Paul 
 Meurice, who are set forth as the authors of the play. 
 It will be scarcely credited of gentlemen undertaking 
 the task of translation that they are absolutely ignorant 
 of the meaning of the word ' canon ', confounding it with 
 ' cannon ', and that they render the line, ' Or that the 
 Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaugh- 
 ter,' thus: 
 
 " ' Ou si le suicide, insulte a TEternel.' 
 " ' Ne devait pas de compte a la foudre du del' 
 as though speaking of the action of a heavenly eighty- 
 
HAMLET. 59 
 
 ton gun. Hamlet's exclamation, 'Well said, old mole,' 
 on hearing the Ghost's voice bidding his companions 
 ' swear,' has evidently puzzled the authors. But they 
 meet the difficulty by making the voice heard, first on 
 the extreme right then on the extreme left of the stage, 
 as though the majesty of buried Denmark were literally 
 a mole burrowing his way through the earth ; the cour- 
 tiers follow the sound and Hamlet says, ' Tu fais du 
 chemin, taupe!' 
 " The lines, 
 
 ' Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 
 Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd. 
 No reckoning made, but sent to my account 
 With all my imperfections on my head,' 
 
 are rendered : 
 
 'Et, p^cheur, je mourns sans pretre, sans pri^re. 
 Sans extreme-onction, sans regard en arrifere, 
 Et comparus, devant le Seigneur irrite. 
 Charge de tout le poids de mon iniquity. ' 
 
 Thus, throughout do the noble lines come forth limp, 
 attenuated, flat and almost unrecognizable : 
 
 " How now? a rat! 
 Dead, for a ducat, dead," 
 
 is 
 
 " ' Mort, je parie ! 
 Un ducat, qu'il est mort! " 
 
 When the Ghost summons Hamlet on the platform 
 and Horatio says : 
 
 ' It beckons you to go away with it, 
 As if it some impartment did desire 
 To you alone,' 
 
 we find 
 
 ' Du doigt il vous appelle, et semble avoir affaire 
 A parler a vous seul. ' 
 
 " M. Mounet-Sully, who plays Hamlet, is a stout, well- 
 proportioned, middle-aged man, with long dark hair, 
 large mobile features and eyes full of expression, save 
 when under the influence of excitement, he squints 
 horribly. Intelligent, certainly, graceful in his way, but 
 in all his ' Frenchified ' exaggeration, his ranting, his 
 moaning, his cries, his gesticulation Fechtero ipso Fech- 
 
6o HAMLET. 
 
 terius. At the end of his interview with the Ghost, he 
 faints and rolls on his back ; he is constantly running 
 on and off the stage, rolling his eyes like the toy Turk, 
 covering and uncovering his head and ' fidgeting ' gen- 
 erally. Some of the obvious points he misses or slurs 
 over. For instance, when Hamlet has killed Polonius, 
 and asks, 'Nay, I know not; is it the King?' which 
 Kean, springing from the back of the stage, and gain- 
 ing his mother's side at one bound, delivered in a 
 hoarse whisper — M. Sully, never changing his easy 
 attitude, casually inquires, ' Serait-ce pas le Roi ? ' as 
 though it were not a matter of much moment. Some 
 of the great soliloquies he gives intelligently, but he is 
 obviously more at home in the melodramatic portions 
 of the play, e. g., his love-making to Ophelia, which is 
 of the exalted boulevardier type, and his references to 
 ' ma mare : ' 
 
 ' Que ma m^re, O mon Dieu ! soit ma m^re toujours ! ' 
 a sentiment, which, come where it may, never fails to 
 move a French audience almost to tears. Mile. Reich- 
 emberg's Ophelia, though probably more after Dumas's 
 idea than Shakspeare's, is very pretty, and she speaks 
 with great purity and clearness, and is charming to look 
 at ; but an ingenue, after all, and not Ophelia. The best 
 played part is Polonius, by M. Got, who is now, probably, 
 the finest actor in the world, and whose representation 
 of courtly senility is simply perfect. I doubt whether 
 Polonius wore a gold pince-nez similar to that with which 
 M. Got adorns himself when preparing to read Hamlet's 
 verses to his daughter, and whether Hamlet himself, in 
 the play-scene flourished such a one-franc Palais Royal 
 fan as M. Sully wields. The King and Queen, who are 
 always disagreeable people, were here particularly offen- 
 sive ; the King a farouche savage with a golden bee-hive 
 on his head, looked as if the ' toasts joyeux' for which 
 he declared his predeliction had given him the vin triste, 
 while the lady representing the Queen gave full promi- 
 nence to the amorous inclinations of that elderly sinner." 
 
A COMPARISON 
 
 DIFFERENT PERFORMANCES 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
Hazlitt : Hamlet is probably of all others the most 
 difficult to personate on the stage. It is like the attempt 
 to embody a shadow. 
 
 Lewes : Hamlet is the easiest of all Shakspeare's 
 great parts for an actor of moderate ability. 
 
 Hackett : John Kemble is reported to have declared 
 that he studied Hamlet seven years before he acted it ; 
 and, although he had then played it thirty years, every 
 time he repeated it, something new in it struck him. 
 
 Edwin Booth : He \Hamlet'\ is the epitome of man- 
 kind, not an individual; a sort of magic mirror in which 
 all men and women see the reflex of themselves, and 
 therefore has his story always been, is still, and will ever 
 be the most popular of stage tragedies. 
 
 Horace Howard Furness: Upon no throne built 
 by mortal hands has ever "beat so fierce a light " as upon 
 that airy fabric reared at Elsinore. 
 
ELLEN TERRY AS ■■OPHELIA." 
 
SCENE FIRST. 
 The (London) Theatre: In the first scene, as Ham-s 
 let was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in 
 1878-9, and as in Mr. Taylor's arrangement of the 
 play brought out at the Crystal Palace in 1873, the 
 Ghost made his appearance, not in a front scene, but on 
 the battlements of the castle. 
 
 Kate Field : In pre-Fechterian days Horatios sense- 
 lessly crossed the Ghost's path, as if such a step would 
 stay its progress. Not so with Mr. Fechter, whose 
 Horatio made the sign of the cross, at which the Ghost 
 stopped as a Catholic ghost should. Once interpreted 
 thus, intelligence exclaims, " Of course," and yet Hora- 
 tios have been crossing the stage for three hundred years. 
 
 COURT-SCENE. 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : He was not merely sad, 
 but stricken in grief, at the sudden and mysterious death 
 of his father. He is stung by instinctive suspicion of 
 his uncle. He is shamed and outraged by his mother's 
 hasty and incestuous marriage. He sobs audibly. 
 When the " uncle-father " addresses him, 
 
 " But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son," 
 he answers aside, in bitter murmur, 
 
 "A little more than kin, and less than kind." 
 To his mother's vague generalization about the com- 
 monness of death, he answers with restrained respect, 
 
66 HAMLET. 
 
 "Ay, Madame, it is — common." 
 But when she urges a question of cold complaint, he 
 vindicates the profound sincerity of his grief in that 
 fine speech beginning — 
 
 " Seems, Madame ! nay it is." 
 We pause upon this passage, for in the searching and 
 thoughtful emphasis he gave to its delivery, Mr. Booth 
 struck the key-note of Hamlet's character, the depth of 
 which, action nor language, however eloquent or effect- 
 ive, could ever fully reveal. " He had that within which 
 passeth show." 
 
 Charles Kean (Hermann Vezin) : His first entrance 
 
 in Hamlet was marked with a firmness and determination 
 
 in bearing and walk which would have suited a young 
 
 warrior just entering the lists ; and he stood in a bold 
 
 upright attitude, his arms folded and his handsome eyes 
 
 turned up (so long that the position must have been 
 
 painful) in utter disregard of his mother's words, 
 
 " Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids 
 Seek for thy noble father in the dust." 
 
 The whole action was picturesque, spirited and graceful, 
 
 but utterly unlike Hamlet. 
 
 Edwin Forrest (Alger) : Most players of Hamlet, 
 in the scene where he first appears among the courtiers 
 before the King and Queen, have taken a conspicuous 
 position, drawing all eyes. Forrest, with a delicate 
 perception that the deep melancholy and suspicion in 
 which he was plunged would make him averse to ostenta- 
 tion, was seen in the rear, as if avoiding notice, and only 
 came forward when the King called him by name, with 
 the title of son. He then betrayed his prophetic mislike 
 
HAMLET. 67 
 
 of his uncle by the dark look and satirical inflection 
 with which he said aside, 
 
 "A little more than kin, and less than kind." 
 
 His reply to the expostulation of his mother, 
 
 " Seems, Madame, etc.," 
 
 was given with a sincerity, naturalness and beauty irre- 
 sistible in effect. His grief and gloom appeared to 
 embody themselves in a voice that wailed and quivered 
 the weeping syllables like the tone of a bell swinging 
 above a city smitten with the plague. 
 
 Charles Fechter (Kate Field): He was gloomy 
 enough, was Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, as lie sat beside his 
 mother, — starting when the King addressed him as "our 
 son" yet gently exclaiming, while kissing the Queen's 
 hand with courtly grace, and giving by an almost im- 
 perceptible accent a key to the estimate in which he 
 held his uncle-father, 
 
 " I shall in all my best <Saerj you, Madame." 
 Left to himself, he gazed fondly at his father's portrait, 
 worn about his neck, and illustrated the beautiful apos- 
 trophe by reference to it. 
 
 Wilson Barrett {Dramatic Notes): Hamlet en- 
 ters in the court-scene closely followed by the King and 
 Queen. At the first words of the King, he rises as 
 though resentful at being spoken to, and his reply to 
 his mother bears a tone of indignation. By his manner, 
 Hamlet is convinced in his own mind of the King's 
 guilt, and he regards his own mother with no filial 
 devotion. Indeed, Mr. Barrett shows no tenderness for 
 his mother or anyone else in the play. 
 
 " A little more than kin and less than kind." 
 
68 HAMLET. 
 
 The last word was pronounced with a short /, as in 
 tinder, and the German word for child, meaning a little 
 more than cousin, but less than child. The word so 
 pronounced is still in use in several districts in England. 
 
 Sliakspeariana : Back in the centre of the group, 
 within the noble room whose wide, round arches are 
 hung with motley colored arras, stands watching them 
 a peculiarly graceful young man in black velvet doublet, 
 a loosely-gathered, wide-neck white shirt and black silk 
 hose. He makes the one patch of solemn suiting in 
 the midst of the many glancing colors. His absolute 
 isolation from the rest of the people about him, and his 
 ready suspicion of them, is the note on which Mr. Wilson 
 Barrett lays the accent here and elsewhere throughout 
 the play. The quivering muscles of his lips and cheeks, 
 the involuntary twitching of the brows, the often unveiled 
 keenness of his glance, and the bitter-sweetness of his 
 replies to his mother, " Seems, Madame ! Nay, it is: I 
 know not seems" and "I shall in all my best obey you, 
 Madame" (this, however, being given without the 
 special stress with Fechter laid upon the yoti) — all these 
 points of his demeanor indicate a conception of Hamlet, 
 earnest, refined, studied from what he would call, doubt- 
 less, a common-sense point of view, original and attrac- 
 tive. 
 
 (Wilson Barrett's conception of Hamlet making him 
 only twenty, it followed that the King and Queen were 
 proportionately younger, and they were made to assume a 
 lighter and brighter manner than usual. They laughed, 
 they toyed much with each other, their hands and arms 
 were intertwined and interlocked, but the poor Ghost 
 
HAMLET. 69 
 
 was left at the same age. A handsome King and Queen 
 was thought to be an innovation, but with Fechter, 
 George Jordan and Mrs. Ellsworth were as handsome a 
 pair as ever sat on a throne.) 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865): 
 Before the splendid King and Queen bent a slight, lithe 
 figure, robed in black, which seemed to absorb gloomily 
 into itself the brightness of the place and cast a shadow 
 on it — so sad, so desolate, so intense, so stricken it 
 stood. When the King came toward it, with open palm 
 and loud 
 
 " And now, my cousin Hamlet and my son," 
 
 it started slightly and moved away ; the scornful 
 " A little more than kin and less than kind," 
 
 falling in a half whisper from his lips. While the Queen 
 addressed to Hamlet her querulous commonplaces about 
 death, he seemed to shake off a little of his abstraction ; 
 listened as one who endured, and answered with 
 enforced respectfulness of manner, 
 
 "Ay, Madame, it is — common." 
 But there was the agony of a deep heart in the 
 " Seems, Madame, nay it is — I know not seems," 
 and in the lines that follow. Then one understood what 
 his love for his father had been, and what his grief was. 
 He heard the coarse harangue of the King with a 
 courtier's silence, only the spasmodic closing of the 
 hands at the words, 
 
 " Our chiefest courtier, cousin and our son," 
 
 revealing the inward passion. 
 
70 HAMLET. 
 
 Henry Irving (Lady Hardy): From the first 
 moment he enters upon the stage, lounging with a sour, 
 discontented air, in the rear of his mother's retinue, we 
 feel that no heroic creature will stride to the front to 
 compel our admiration and carry our sympathies by 
 storm ; it is a very human being, with faults and frailties 
 like our own. He is a gentleman, courteous in manner, 
 pungent in speech, but with a mind clouded and ill at 
 ease. The question of Hamlet's sanity or insanity has 
 always been a moot point, some maintaining the. one 
 Viewj some the other. Mr. Irving sails between the 
 two and represents him as neither wholly mad nor wholly 
 sane ; we feel that over-study, aided by an over-sensi- 
 tive organization, has given his brain a slight twist, and 
 sent it a pin's point awry; the sudden death of his 
 father, followed so speedily by the shameless marriage 
 of his mother, gives it a shock and it trembles in the 
 balance; next comes the supernatural visitation, the 
 declaration of his father's murder which utterly disturbs 
 his reason ; he cannot accept and dare not reject the 
 Ghost's revelation, and at last he resolves on the play 
 as a touchstone to decide the fact. 
 
 HAMLET'S FIRST SOLILOQUY. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : Hamlet is left alone, 
 and instantly unburdens his heart in the soliloquy 
 beginning, 
 
 " Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt." 
 
 Did Shakspeare intend the speech to be uttered aloud 
 or only mused upon? The question becomes pertinent, 
 
*-k: ':>:.;, ^%^ 
 
 HENRY IRVING. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 71 
 
 in view of Lamb's objection to the stage-representation 
 of the play, where he speaks of Hamlet's " hght and noise 
 abhorring ruminations." We think the terse vigor of 
 the language would find a tongue. It did find an 
 eloquent tongue in Booth. The jostle of thoughts, the 
 impatient leaps of emotion, all crowding for utterance, 
 found meet expression in his rapid and changeful 
 delivery. 
 
 " Frailty, tliy name is woman," 
 
 as if no other name were needed. 
 
 " Married with mine uncle \patise\. 
 My father's brother \in low and slighting tones] ; 
 
 then without a pause — 
 
 " But no more Hie my father 
 Than I to Hercules." 
 
 Wilson Barrett (Dramatic Notes) : When Hamlet 
 is left alone he delivers the speech, 
 
 "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh, etc.," 
 with his gaze attracted in the direction whither the King 
 and Queen had gone, by the sound of laughter at the 
 words, 
 
 "That it should come to this." 
 
 Here he also produced the medallion of his beloved 
 father which he fondly regards. 
 
 Garrick (G. C. Lichtenberg, 1775, quoted in Fur- 
 ness's "Variorum Shakspeare ") : In the sohloquy, 
 
 " O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt," 
 tears completely overpowered Garrick. Of the words 
 
 " So excellent a King," 
 the last is uttered inaudibly ; it is caught only from the 
 movement of the lips, which close upon the word firmly 
 
72 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 and with a quiver, in order to suppress an expression 
 of grief which might seem unmanly. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865) : The 
 
 soliloquy, 
 
 "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt," 
 
 was given as he moved from side to side of the stagej 
 
 or half flung down upon his chair in an attitude of 
 
 utter abandonment. But this soliloquy was most 
 
 unequal. Sometimes it seemed the merest repetition of 
 
 words to him. Sometimes it seemed to shake his being^ 
 
 and sometimes the hnes, 
 
 " O God, O God, 
 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world," 
 
 moaned themselves forth in tones so bitter and so hope- 
 less, that one looked to see him end the scene with his 
 bare bodkin. 
 
 ENTER HORATIO, BERNARDO AND 
 MARCELLUS. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865) : The 
 instant change from the passionate desolation of grief to 
 the exqusite courtesy of the host, when the three young 
 men approached, with his tender welcome to Horatio 
 was one of the finest of his transitions. Indeed, the 
 whole expression of his love for that strong, faithful 
 Hmited, unimaginative nature, was very truthful. He 
 leaned on him to the last, and seemed to go out upon 
 the dread unknown with firmer soul, because his friend's- 
 even and undaunted spirit lent him courage. The story- 
 
HAMLET. 73 
 
 of the appearance of the Ghost he hears with feverish 
 eagerness, but with extreme quiet. 
 
 John Kemble (Boaden) : Kemble's reading was, 
 
 "Sir, my good Friend! I'll change that name with you." 
 This in reply to Horatio's greeting, 
 
 "Your poor servantevex." 
 
 Dr. Johnson thought the emphasis should be 
 
 "Sir, my good Friend! V\\ changt that name with you." 
 
 Henderson evidently understood it to mean " Change 
 the term servant to friend," for he said, 
 
 " I'll change that name with YOU." 
 
 After having recognized Horatio and Marcellus, Mr. 
 Kemble turned toward Bernardo and offered the " Good 
 even, sir," to him. This was thought a novelty. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : His fondness for Horatio 
 was strongly defined from the moment of meeting. 
 There were three distinct shades of tone in " My good 
 friend " (meaning Horatio) ; " I am very glad to see 
 you " (meaning Marcellus), and " Good even, sir " 
 (meaning Bernardo). 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : The insinuation of the King's 
 intemperance was plainly marked in the words : 
 "We'll teach you to drink deep, — ere you depart." 
 He restored " dearest foe," and " beteeme " the winds 
 of heaven. In pronouncing the panegyric, " He was a 
 man," a flood of tenderness came over him, and it was 
 with tears he uttered, 
 
 "I shall not look upon his like again." 
 
 Others have declaimed the passage with stoical firmness. 
 
74 HAMLET. 
 
 and made distinction between the term "king" and 
 
 " man." 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : An expression of great and 
 tender beauty passed over Fechter's face as with clasped 
 hands, he murmured, 
 
 " My father, — methinks I see my father :" 
 while there was filial pride in his explanation, with hand 
 upon Horatio's shoulder, " He was a man, etc." 
 
 Wilson Barrett (^Dramatic Notes) : Hamlet is quite 
 prepared for the supernatural visitation for which 
 Horatio tells him that he has seen his father. Hamlet 
 gives the "Saw! Who?" in a quick tone of interrogation 
 as though he was not at all surprised at such an event. 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : 
 
 " Did you not speak to it? " 
 to Horatio, was said emphatically, and tenderly, as in- 
 ferring from the peculiar intimacy between them, that 
 he surely had ventured to inquire the cause of so awful 
 a visitation. This rendering was criticised adversely by 
 Steevens, and the point was submitted by Kemble to 
 Dr. Johnson who said, " To be sure, sir, — you should be 
 strongly marked. I told Garrick so, long since, but 
 Davy never could see it." 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field ) : When Horatio described his 
 encounter with the Ghost, Fechter crossed his hands the 
 moment his father was mentioned, as if praying for the 
 unhappy spirit. The action was entirely natural to a 
 Catholic. Appealingly sweet was his 
 " Did you not speak to it? " 
 
HAMLET. 75 
 
 addressed to Marcellus, to which his Horatio replied, 
 
 "My Lord, / did." 
 Doubting, not willing to believe without strong evidence, 
 he gave the line, 
 
 " Then saw you not his face ; " 
 as if it read, " Then you did not see his face," which 
 seems reasonable from Horatio's answer: 
 
 " Oh yes, my Lord, he wore his beaver up." 
 
 Hamlet : I would / had been there. 
 Horatio : It would have much amazed you. 
 Hamlet : Very like, very like. 
 
 These lines have always been given as a response to 
 Horatio. Fechter, meditating on the startling intelli- 
 gence that the apparition wore his beaver up, murmured 
 "very hke " as if the sentence read, "very like — my 
 father." Tears filled his eyes as he asked, 
 "Stayed it long?" 
 
 Macready : Hackett criticised Macready's "Armed, 
 say you," in that it confused the auditor's mind as to 
 whether he referred to the Ghost or to those who were 
 to hoFd the watch that night. 
 
 " His beard was grizzled ? No ? " 
 After "grizzled" he allowed the witness not a moment 
 for reflection, but impatiently and rather comically 
 stammered " N — n — no ? " 
 
 Garrick (Mr. Harris, manager of Covent Garden, 
 quoted by Reynolds) : The effect Garrick produced 
 when he uttered the words, 
 
 "I'll watch to-night," 
 
 was electric. I have heard many actors give these words 
 
76 HAMLET. 
 
 in a calm, considerate manner; but Garrick, buoyant 
 with hope and paternal love, rushed exultingly forward 
 and spoke the words with an ardor and animation that 
 electrified the whole audience. 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R. Russell, 1875): When 
 Horatio tells him that he thinks he saw his father yester- 
 night, Hamlet does not start. He has enough to think 
 of, and cannot keep his mind on chit-chat, " Saw ! 
 Who ? " he says almost casually, barely following the 
 discourse. Then with a perfect and most artistic truth 
 to nature, he hears the story of the apparition. He has 
 not anticipated it, but the misgivings of his mind, and 
 the intensity of his distress have prepared him for any- 
 thing. He will watch to-night, not announcing his 
 resolve in a thunderous voice with the practiced aplomb 
 of a veteran tragedian, but in tones of full of rapt, 
 nervous excitement. 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : On hearing of the appari- 
 tion Rossi's Hamlet was almost as much affected as on 
 seeing it — missing, to be sure, the subtlety of " Saw ! 
 Who ? " which is calm wonder, but making a theatrical 
 effect. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : Booth uttered the 
 
 words, 
 
 " Foul deeds will rise," 
 
 as with the voice of fate. Then came the mighty 
 
 parenthesis, 
 
 "Though all the earth o'erwhelm them," 
 
 which he gave with a sweeping gesture, as if taking the 
 
 solid earth, and lifting it as a wave of the sea is lifted, 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 77 
 
 and letting it fall. He then raised a warning hand, with 
 significant -motion, before his face, and with changed 
 voice, couching strength of emphasis on a lower range 
 -of tones, resumed the suspended meaning, 
 " To men's eyes." 
 
 THE SCENES WITH THE GHOST. 
 
 Wilson Barrett gave the first line " Is it very- 
 cold?" His previous suspicions of his uncle's crime 
 -had prepared him for the news he had received from 
 Horatio and robbed the meeting with the Ghost of all 
 awe and terror. Hamlet had expected to see the 
 Ghost, and consequently he is not terrified at its 
 presence. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : When Hamlet, Horatio, and 
 Marcellus appear in the fourth scene, Fechter caused 
 Hamlet to come from an opposite direction. Why ? 
 Because he had previously said that he would visit them 
 ^' upon the platform 'twixt eleven and twelve." They 
 meet for the first time, and the dialogue says as much. 
 
 Betterton (Colley Gibber) : You have seen a 
 Hamlet, perhaps, who, on the first appearance of his 
 father's spirit, has thrown himself into all the straining 
 vociferation requisite to express rage and fury, and the 
 house has thundered its applause, though the misguided 
 actor was all the while, as Shakspeare terms it, "tearing 
 a passion to rags." I am the more bold to offer you 
 this particular instance, because the late Mr. Addison, 
 
78 ■ HAMLET. 
 
 while I sat by him, to see this scene acted, made the 
 same observation, asking me with some surprise, if I 
 thought Hamlet should be in so violent a passion with 
 the Ghost, which, although it might have astonished, it 
 had not provoked him? For you may observe that in 
 this beautiful speech, the passion never rises beyond an 
 almost breathless astonishment, or an impatience limited 
 by filial reverence, to enquire into the suspected wrongs 
 that may have raised him from his peaceful tomb, and 
 a desire to know what a spirit, so seemingly distressed, 
 might wish or enjoin a sorrowful son to execute toward 
 his future quiet in the grave. This was the light into 
 which Betterton threw this scene which he opened with 
 a pause of mute amazement, then rising slowly to a 
 solemn, trembling voice, he made the Ghost equally 
 terrible to the spectator as to himself. In the de- 
 scriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly 
 vision gave, the boldness of his expostulation was still 
 governed by decency, manly, but not braving; his voice 
 never rising into that seeming outrage, or wild defiance 
 of what he naturally revered. 
 
 (Betterton, in his address to the Ghost, is thought to 
 have omitted all after the line "Angels and ministers 
 of grace, etc.," to "What may this mean?" If this was 
 so, it is difficult to see how he obtained so much praise 
 for the passage.) 
 
 Macklin ( Davies) : After the short ejaculation of 
 " Angels and ministers, etc.,'' he endeavored to conquer 
 that fear and terror into which he was naturally thrown 
 by his first sight of the vision, and uttered the remainder 
 of the address calmly, but respectfully, and with a firm 
 
HAMLET. 79 
 
 voice, as from one who had subdued his timidity and 
 apprehension. 
 
 Barton Booth as the Ghost (Davies) : His slow, 
 solemn and undertone of voice, his noiseless tread, as if 
 he had been composed of air, and his whole deportment 
 inspired the audience with the feeling which is excited 
 by awful astonishment. The impression of his appear- 
 ance in this part was so powerful upon a constant fre- 
 quenter of the theatres for nearly sixty years that he 
 assured me when long after Booth's death he was pre- 
 sent at the tragedy of Hamlet, as soon as the name of 
 the Ghost was pronounced on the stage, he felt a kind 
 of awe and terror, of which, said he, I was soon cured 
 by his appearance. 
 
 Garrick (G. C. Lichtenberg, 1775, quoted in Fur- 
 ness's "Variorum Shakspeare") : Hamlet appeared in 
 black. Horatio and Marcellus are with him, in uniform ; 
 they are expecting the Ghost. Hamlet's arms are folded, 
 and his hat overshadows his eyes ; the theatre is darkened, 
 and the whole audience of some thousands is as still and 
 all faces are as immovable as if they were painted on 
 the walls ; one might hear a pin drop in the remotest 
 part of the theatre. Suddenly, as Hamlet retires some- 
 what further -from the front to the left, turning his back 
 upon the audience, Horatio starts exclaiming, " Look ! 
 my Lord, it comes I " pointing to the right, where, with- 
 out the spectators being aware of its coming, the Ghost 
 is seen standing motionless. At these words Garrick 
 turns suddenly about, at the same instant starting with 
 trembling knees two or three steps backward ; his hat 
 
So HAMLET. 
 
 falls off; his arms, especially the left, are extended 
 straight out, the left hand as high as his head, the right 
 arm is more bent, and the hand lower, the fingers are 
 spread apart, and the mouth open ; thus he stands one 
 foot far advanced before the other, in a graceful attitude, 
 as if petrified, supported by his friends, who, from having 
 seen the apparition before, are less unprepared for it, 
 and who fear that he will fall to the ground ; so expres- 
 sive of horror is his mein that a shudder seized me 
 again and again before he began to speak ; the almost 
 fearful stillness of the audience which preceded this 
 scene, and made one feel that he was hardly sure of 
 himself, contributed, I suppose, not a little to the effect. 
 At last Hamlet exclaims, not at the beginning but at the 
 end of an expiration, and with an agitated voice : 
 
 "Angels and ministers of grace, defend us ! " 
 
 words which complete all this scene could want to render 
 it one of the greatest and most terrible. His eyes are 
 fixed upon the Ghost even while he speaks with his 
 friends, from whom he struggles to free himself But, 
 at last, as they will not let him go, he turns his face 
 toward them, tears himself violently away from them, 
 and with a quickness that makes one shudder, draws 
 his sword upon them : 
 
 " I'll make a ghost of him that lets me ! " 
 
 he exclaims. That is enough for them. He then ex- 
 tends his sword toward the Ghost : 
 
 "Goon; I'll follow thee." 
 
 The Ghost leads the way. Hamlet, with the sword still 
 held before him, stands motionless in order to gain a 
 wider interval. At last, when the Ghost is no longer 
 
HAMLET. 8i 
 
 visible to the spectators, he begins slowly to follow it, 
 pausing, and then advancing, with the sword still ex- 
 tended, his eyes fixed upon the Ghost, his hair all dis- 
 ordered, and still breathless, until he disappears behind 
 the scenes. 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : Kemble said, 
 
 "And for my soul, what can it do to thafi" 
 Garrick, here with great quickness said, 
 
 " What can it do to that ? " 
 In Garrick's this was a truism asserted ; in Kemble's, 
 not merely asserted, but enjoyed. 
 
 (Having drawn his sword to menace the friends who 
 prevented him from following the Ghost, every Hamlet 
 before Kemble presented the point to the phantom, as 
 he followed him to the removed ground. Kemble, 
 having drawn it on his friends, retained it in his right 
 hand, but turned his left toward the Spirit, and drooped 
 the weapon after him, a change says Boaden, both 
 tasteful and judicious. As a defense against such a 
 being it was ridiculous to present the point. To retain 
 it unconsciously showed how completely he was ab- 
 sorbed by the dreadful mystery he was exploring.) 
 
 Edmund Kean (Hazlitt): Kean's surprise when he 
 first sees the Ghost, his eagerness and filial confidence 
 in following it, the impressive pathos of his action and 
 voice \xi addressing it, 
 
 "I'll call thee ' Hamlet, father, Royal Dane,' 
 were admirable. Mr. Kean has introduced in this part 
 a new reading, as it is called, which we think perfectly 
 correct. In the scene where he breaks from his friends 
 
82 HAMLET. 
 
 to obey the command of his father, he keeps his sword 
 pointed behind him, to prevent them from following 
 him, instead of holding it before him to protect him 
 from the Ghost. 
 
 Rossi : After Hamlet's struggle with his friends 
 and he had broken from them, he exclaims " Away," 
 directing them to leave him, which they do, bowing low 
 at the command of the Prince; then turning to the 
 Ghost he says " Go on, I'll follow thee." 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould): His adjuration of the 
 Spirit reached a climax of feeling in the word " Father," 
 into which he threw the agony of his grief, and the con- 
 tending hope and fear born of his strange visitation. 
 After a momentary pause, the figure remaining silent, 
 Hamlet re-commences, and delivers without pause, 
 "Royal Dane, O answer me.'' 
 
 In all editions of the play, there is a colon after" Royal 
 Dane:" Booth overruled this pause, with a more subtle 
 perception of the meaning of the passage than has been 
 shown by any commentator. 
 
 The first effect of the sudden apparition passes 
 rapidly off", and Hamlet soon finds himself in strange 
 and calm accord with the silent but beckoning visitor. 
 To the dissuasion of his friends he says:— 
 
 " Why, what should be the fear? 
 I do not set my life at a pin's fee ; 
 And, for my soul, what can it do to that, 
 Being a thing immortal, — as itself? 
 
 Booth's manner here is hard to analyze. It may suffice 
 to say, that both tone and action scaled the heights of 
 spiritual thought. He seemed to have digested in his 
 
HAMLET. 83 
 
 soul the very bitterness of death, to have passed beyond, 
 and to speak as one conscious of his immortaHty. 
 
 Edmund Kean (Joe Cowen, quoted by Molloy) : 
 When Kean came on I was astonished. I was prepared 
 to see a small man ; but diminished by the unusual dis- 
 tance and his black dress, and a mental comparison with 
 Kemhle's princely person, he appeared a perfect 
 pigmy ; his voice, unlike any I had ever heard before, 
 perhaps from its very strangeness, was most objection- 
 able, and I turned to Keeley and at once pronounced 
 him a most decided humbug. I quietly gazed on 
 through three tedious scenes till it came to the dialogue 
 with the Ghost, and at the line 
 
 "I'll call thee Hamlet — father," 
 I was converted. Father is not a pretty word to look 
 at, but it is beautiful to hear when lisped by little child- 
 ren, or spoken by Edmund Kean in Hamlet. 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : When Hamlet, with Horatio and 
 Marcellus, came upon the platform at twelve to watch 
 for the Ghost, and said, 
 
 "The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold," 
 
 he finely indicated by his absent and preoccupied man- 
 ner that he was not thinking about the cold, but was 
 full of the solemn expectation of something else. He 
 took a position nigh to the entrance of the Ghost, and 
 continued his desultory talk about the custom of carous- 
 ing in Denmark, till the spectral figure stalked in, almost 
 touching him. Then Hamlet turned with a violent 
 start of amazement and a short cry, and while the white 
 face looked down into his own, uttered the most affect- 
 
84 HAMLET. 
 
 ing invocation ever spoken by man, in a subdued and 
 beseeching tone that seemed freighted with the very 
 soul of bewildered awe and piteous pleading. His 
 voice was in a high key but husky, the vocality half 
 dissolved in mysterious breath. His look was that of 
 startled amazement touched with love and eagerness. 
 The remorseful Macbeth confronted the ghost of Banquo 
 with petrifying terror; the thunderstruck Richard saw 
 the ghosts of his victims with wild horror, but Hamlet 
 was innocent, his spirit was that of truth and filial piety, 
 and when the marble tomb yawned forth its messenger 
 from the invisible world to revisit the glimpses of the 
 moon, although his fleshly nature might tremble at 
 recognizing the manifest supernatural, his soul would 
 indeed be wonder-thrilled but not unhinged, feeling it- 
 self as immortal as that on which he looked. His figure 
 perfectly still, leaning forward with intent face, his whole 
 soul concentrated in eye and ear, breathed mute suppli- 
 cation. The harrowing tale finished, the Ghost disap- 
 pears, saying 
 
 "Adieu ! Adieu ! Hamlet, remember me." 
 A withering spell seemed to have fallen on Hamlet and 
 instantly aged him. He looked as pale and shriveled 
 as the frozen moonlight, and the wintry landscape 
 around him. He spoke the soliloquy that followed, 
 with a feeble and slow laboriousness expressive of terri- 
 ble pain and anxiety. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : Enveloped in a gray, pictur- 
 esque cloak and black velvet cowl, Fechter's Hamlet 
 dropped the former, and, with hands on Horatio at 
 sight of the Ghost, delivered the invocation with solemn. 
 
HAMLET. ?,i, 
 
 tender earnestness, removing the cowl at the word 
 
 "king," and throwing filial pathos into the word " father." 
 
 " Go on, I'll follow thee." 
 
 His exit was slow, but in no way unnaturally measured, 
 
 with sword unsheathed and held in the left hand as if it 
 
 were a cross. 
 
 "Alas, poor Ghost," 
 
 was given with pitying sweetness of tone. Kneeling at 
 the words " I am thy father's Spirit," Fechter did not 
 rise until the adjuration, " Haste me to know, etc.," and 
 though his back was turned to the audience during the 
 Ghost's confession, there was much expression in his 
 pantomime. Nevertheless, but for the exceedingly 
 clever management of the Ghost's instantaneous disap- 
 pearance — the invention being Fechter's — it was a 
 pity to lose the play of feature which Fechter would 
 have thrown into his eager listening silence. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Winter) : Many years ago an acci- 
 dental impulse led Booth to hold out his sword, hilt 
 foremost, toward the receding spectre, as a protective 
 cross, the symbol of that religion to which Hamlet so 
 frequently recurs. The expedient was found to justify 
 itself, and he made it a custom. 
 
 Henry Irving (London Theatre) : The old stage 
 direction that the Ghost should make his revelation " on 
 another part of the platform " is probably due to the 
 absence of scenery in Shakspeare's time, and the revela- 
 tion at the Lyceum (1878-9) was made in a lonely 
 spot some way distant from the castle. This change is 
 in strict accordance with the text; Hamlet follows the 
 
86 HAMLET. 
 
 Ghost from midnight till the approach of dawn, and his 
 words " I'll go no further," joined to the difficulty 
 Horatio and Marcellus evidently have in finding him, 
 denote that a considerable distance must have been 
 traveled. The quaint apostrophe to the Ghost, "Art 
 thou there, old true penny?" and " Well said, old mole," 
 are restored. The scene as painted at the Lyceum was 
 striking. The Ghost had taken Hamlet to 
 
 "The dreadful summit of the cliff 
 That beetles o'er his base into the sea.'' 
 
 and standing among a number of massive rocks, pro- 
 ceeds to speak. The soft light of the moon falls upon 
 the spectral figure ; not a sound from below can be 
 heard, and the first faint glimpses of the dawn are steal- 
 ing over the immense expanse of water before us. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucie Gilbert Calhoun, 1865) : Ham- 
 let is turned away, when Horatio suddenly exclaims, 
 "Look, my Lord, it comes!" He catches sight of the 
 vision, staggers toward Horatio, falls against him, 
 gasping, 
 
 "Angels and ministers of grace, defend us ! " 
 
 It is not terror of the supernatural alone. It is the ap- 
 palling confirmation of his fears. It is the presence of 
 his father hovering in some awful borderland, which is 
 not life nor death, but wherein is seen the horrible image 
 of both. His voice is husky and far away He shivers 
 as if the cold of the grave were upon him. Then re- 
 verence for the majestical presence banishes fear. His 
 voice gathers power and sweetness, as the words struggle 
 forth. When he utters the one word " father," his love 
 seems to overflow it, and expand it into volumes of 
 
HAMLET. 87 
 
 tenderest speech as he falls on his knees, and stretches 
 out eager hands to the solemn Shade. The " O, answer 
 me," was incredibly imploring and persuasive. The 
 terrible silence seems again to appall him, and the 
 
 " Say, why is this ? Wherefore ? What should we do ? " 
 
 was breathed out as if a man of stone had spoken. 
 When his friends urge him not to follow the Ghost, he 
 answers as knowing that they have spoken but uncon- 
 scious of their presence, like one in a dream ; so possessed 
 is he by the command of the King. He is deaf to 
 Horatio's remonstrance. The change to the passionate 
 outcry against their hindrance of him ; the supple 
 strength with which he eludes their hold ; the instant 
 return to childish submission and obedience to the Ghost ; 
 the slow creeping away into the night; the half doubt 
 and shuddering dread that overtake him ; the re-resolve 
 that come what may, he will pluck out the heart of this 
 mystery ; his quicker steps as he is lost in the shadows, 
 are finely dramatic. 
 
 When the scene opens, the whole stage is disclosed. 
 In the distance glows the grim castle, noisy with the 
 orgies of the drunken King. The Ghost stalks into the 
 moonlight. Down the massive steps leading to the 
 platform stumbles Hamlet, crying out hoarsely in the 
 darkness, 
 
 "Whither wilt thou lead me ? Speak, I'll go no further; '' 
 
 and staggering forward, the moonlight falls on his ashen 
 face, on his wild eyes, on his disheveled hair. 
 " I am thy father's spirit," 
 
 groans the Ghost, in voice that seems to come from the 
 lowest fires, wherein he is compelled to fast. Slowly, 
 
88 HAMLET. 
 
 Hamlet sinks on his knees. There is no longer terror 
 in his countenance. Infinijie yearning, infinite compas- 
 sion, infinite tenderness, agonized longing to know the 
 truth, look from his face. 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R. Russell) : The extreme 
 and plaintive beseechingness of Irving's address to the 
 Ghost is the distinct novelty of his reading. It has 
 been complained that he does not look so frightened as 
 a man would who saw a ghost, but to Hamlet this is not 
 a ghost but the Ghost. 
 
 Fechter (George B. Woods) : We have learned ta 
 see the melancholy Prince, after the first moment of 
 natural terror, subdued to a breathless awe of the spirit 
 of his father, so possessed by a yearning, pitying affec- 
 tion for " the dear murthered," as to be almost uncon- 
 scious of all other things ; but this Hamlet showed about 
 the same quality of terror with his plebeian companions, 
 and then forgets the restraining presence of a super- 
 natural visitant, to squabble with and put down his 
 friends by an exhibition of superior physical strength, 
 and to loftily defy them after he had shaken them off. 
 
 Wilson Barrett (^Shakspeariand) : Mr. Barrett did 
 not scare us by his own horror as Fielding says Garrick 
 scared Partridge. Partridge (in " Tom Jones ") could 
 see nothing appalling in the Ghost itself, but he " gave 
 that credit to Garrick," he had denied other assurance 
 that this apparition was a real ghost, and " fell into such 
 a violent fit of trembling that his knees knocked against 
 each other," declaring, " Nay, you may call me coward 
 if you will, but if that little man there on the stage is 
 
HAMLET. 89 
 
 not frightened, then I never saw a man frightened in my 
 life." 
 
 Now, there may not be many Partridges in a modern 
 audience. It was evident, however, that Mr. Barrett 
 meant to seem to be frightened himself, and though his 
 fright was not powerful " so horridly to shake our dis- 
 positions," it did not fail to be impressive. It was a 
 difficult task. To be explosive and yet fail to stun, to 
 utter the great oh's ! that Mr. Barrett uttered at the first 
 appearance of the Ghost (and afterward on the ramparts 
 at the words, "Mark me"), to kneel and cower, with 
 outstretched, trembling fingers, and yet to question 
 horror-stricken, to start, and stop, gasping, and yet to 
 resolve, fearfully, against the restraint of Horatio and 
 Marcellus, — though he drew no sword against them, as 
 the usual stage-custom is, an act of violence which 
 might serve to nerve the hard resolve — to break away 
 and follow, to lift his cloak and veil his eyes as though 
 the hideous sight were more than could be borne, and 
 yet to follow the dread wafture of the Ghost to " more 
 removed ground," to falter and follow slowly, yet steadily; 
 to aim thus at the difficult effect of inducing abject terror 
 by sympathy, and yet, though not reaching this, still 
 not to belittle the part, which must be reverential, — to 
 do this, Mr. Barrett must have almost reached his 
 object. 
 
 Garrick (Cole) : Dr. Johnson, who never lost an 
 opportunity of finding fault with Garrick, thought his 
 terror in the ghost-scene exaggerated and unnatural. 
 " Do you think. Sir, if you saw a ghost," said Boswell, 
 "you would start as Garrick does in Hamlet? " "No, 
 
9° 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 Sir," replied the great philosopher, " If I did, I should 
 frighten the Ghost." 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R. Russell) : Does Irving 
 discard the tablets ? By no means. But he makes the 
 use of them life-like and probable. His snatching them 
 from his pocket, and writing on them, is the climax of 
 an outburst hardly distinguishable from hysteria. 
 
 Kemble and Henderson (Boaden) : The kneehng 
 at the descent of the Ghost was censured as a trick, but 
 it marked the filial reverence of Hamlet, and the solem- 
 nity of the engagement he had contracted. Henderson 
 saw it, and adopted it immediately, and was applauded 
 for doing so. Henderson and Kemble agreed in the 
 seeming intention of particular disclosure to Horatio : 
 "Yes, but there is, Horatio, and much offense too,'' 
 
 turned off upon the pressing forward of Marcellus to 
 
 partake the communication. Kemble only, however, 
 
 prepared the way for this by the marked address to 
 
 Horatio, 
 
 " Did you not speak to it? " 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : In the scene follow- 
 ing the terrible revelation of the Spirit, when his friends 
 find him and he swears them to secresy, Hamlet holds 
 up the hilt of his sword, the cross and not the blade for 
 the imposition of their hands. We have seen, both in 
 picture and on the stage, the hands of Horatio and Mar- 
 cellus laid along the blade. 
 
 Ghost (beneath). Swear. 
 
 Hamlet. There are more things in heaven 
 
 and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
 
HAMLET. 9 1 
 
 A light scorn in the last word ; and his hand passed his 
 forehead, with a gesture equally light and evanescent. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : He bowed profoundly at the 
 Ghost's "Fare thee well at once," and when Horatio 
 called without, " Heaven secure him," meaning Hamlet. 
 Fechter, intent upon the Ghost, prayerfully added, " So 
 be it," turning the words to a deeper significance than 
 they had ever possessed. Hamlet alone was his 
 valued friend. ^ Horatio alone had so far sworn not to 
 reveal the news, and Hamlet hurriedly began to tell his 
 story, 
 
 ' There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark — " 
 when, suddenly remembering and doubting Marcellus, he 
 turned from his purpose and added, 
 
 " But he's an arrant knave.'' 
 
 At which platitude Horatio has reason to criticise his 
 friend. The line, 
 
 "You, as your business and desire shall point you," 
 
 was addressed to Marcellus. Hamlet's wild and whirling 
 words were because of his presence. He was talking to 
 conceal thought. Taking Horatio's hand (according to 
 stage-direction) he remarked to him, 
 
 " Touching this vision here, 
 It is an honest Ghost, that let me tell you." 
 
 Then looking at Marcellus he continued, 
 
 " For your desire to know what is between us, 
 O'ermaster it as you may." 
 
 Fechter's Hamlet did not insult Horatio by assuming 
 superiorwisdom and exclaiming, " There are more things 
 in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in 
 your philosophy," but accented "philosophy" by which 
 
92 HAMLET. 
 
 the pronoun possessed the same significance as when 
 Edmund Kean substituted " our ' for "your." 
 With arm linked in Horatio's, Hamlet said, 
 
 " Let us go in together," 
 
 and leaving Marcellus down the stage addressed to him 
 the parting injunction, 
 
 "And still your fingers on your lips, I pray." 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : On seeing the Ghost he 
 fell backward with a wild cry, like that of the startled 
 sea-bird ; and although the only subsequent remark 
 made by the lime-lighted spectre that seemed to affect 
 him was the command not to assail his mother, his 
 demeanor toward that visitant was steadily replete with 
 a fearful reverence ; and the act abruptly and improperly 
 closed with the oath business — so as to make a picture. 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R. Russell): At the words 
 " with arms encumbered thus," it is usual for Hamlets 
 to fold their arms and look mysterious. Irving takes 
 the arm of one of his companions, as he supposes they 
 may take each other's hereafter, and assumes a confi- 
 dential air, as if the two were comparing their past 
 recollections. 
 
 Salvini as the Ghost (William Winter) : It pleases 
 Salvini sometimes to use his great talent for pantomime 
 in the wrong place — as, for example, when uttering 
 Othello's farewell, a speech which is never so fine and 
 touching as when it is spoken with no gesticulation or 
 embellishment whatever. But he is supreme and superb 
 in the employment of this expedient at moments when 
 it is essential. As the Ghost, in Hamlet, he could not 
 
HAMLET. 93 
 
 and did not use it, but relied exclusively on a sombre, 
 unearthly aspect and the scope and depth and variety 
 of his phenomenal voice. The impersonation was per- 
 vaded with a noble dignity and grand solemnity. It is 
 not too much to say that in this performance of the 
 <jhost Signor Salvini gave a deeper and clearer impres- 
 sion of his intellectual grasp of this subject of Hamlet 
 than he has before given by his performance of Hamlet 
 himself His elocution in the Ghost's narrative was 
 beautifully shaded, and his introduction of the tender 
 impulse of human feeling when speaking the adieu to 
 Hamlet had a most touching effect. 
 
 (E. A. Dithmar, New York Times) : The Ghost of Sig- 
 ner Salvini, except that that actor used his own language, 
 was just as impressive as the Ghost of the late D. W. 
 Waller, long associated with Mr. Booth's Hamlet, or the 
 performance of Mr. Mead in Mr. Irving's production of 
 the tragedy, and no more impressive than these. An 
 actor of Salvini's wonderful power is out of place in such 
 a part. If he had attempted to give the part more 
 prominence than belongs to it he would have committed 
 an artistic blunder which, of course, Salvini would not 
 be guilty of As he did no more than wear a pictur- 
 €sque costume of dull hues and speak the words of 
 Shakspeare, translated into Italian, in a monotone, he 
 naturally kept the place in the work the dramatist gave 
 to him. Salvini's strength lies in the simulation of vio- 
 lent passions. The force of the passions of love and 
 hatred have been shown on the stage by him in a man- 
 ner no other living player can equal. But the shade of 
 Hamlet's father is as passionless as an icicle; some 
 
94 HAMLET. 
 
 learned critics have contended that the spectre is merely 
 the result of a reflex action ot the Prince's bewildered 
 brain, and that theory is not a whit more puerile than 
 others, gravely expounded, concerning the same play. 
 Salvini's Ghost, then, was not remarkable in any way 
 except that he spoke in Italian poetry which it is not 
 possible to render in that tongue with any approach to 
 its grandeur and dignity in the original. And yet many 
 hundreds of persons paid four dollars to see Booth's 
 Hamlet, with Salvini as the Ghost, when they had often 
 before seen the American actor in the same play sup- 
 ported by a phantom quite as useful. 
 
 ACT II.— POLONIUS. 
 (Davies): The constant practice of the stage from 
 the revival of Hamlet soon after the Restoration to this 
 day (1784), may, perhaps, contribute to justify my 
 opinion of this character. Polonius was always acted 
 by what is termed the low comedian, by Lovell, Nokes, 
 and Cross in former times, who were succeeded by Grif- 
 fin, Hippisley, Taswell and Shuter ; and these again by 
 Wilson, Baddeley and Edwin in the present time. About 
 five and twenty years since, Mr. Garrick had formed a 
 notion that the character of Polonius had been mistaken 
 and misrepresented by the players, and that he was not 
 designed by the author to excite laughter and be an 
 object of ridicule. He imagined, I suppose, with his 
 friend, Dr. Johnson, that his false reasoning and false 
 wit were mere accidents in character, and that his lead- 
 ing feature was dotage encroaching upon wisdom. Full 
 
HAMLET. 95 
 
 of this opinion, Mr. Garrick persuaded Woodward on 
 his benefit-night to put himself in the part of Polonius ; 
 and what was the consequence ? The character, divested 
 of its ridiculous vanity, appeared to the audience flat 
 and insipid. His dress was very different from what the 
 part generally wore ; the habit was grave and rich, cloth 
 of scarlet and gold. So little was the audience pleased 
 with Woodward or Woodward with himself that he never 
 after attempted Polonius. 
 
 (There is something incongruous, however, in the age 
 of Polonius as he is generally represented, and that of 
 his daughter Ophelia ; and the thoughtful spectator is 
 constantly asking himself how it is that so old a man 
 can have so youflg a daughter.) 
 
 Fechter (F. J. Walton) : Polonius asks: 
 
 "What do you read, my Lord? " 
 
 Here Fechter, looking up quickly, replied in a listless, 
 indifferent tone, " words," — then, after a deliberate pause, 
 he advanced toward Polonius quickly and, striking the 
 book excitedly with his forefinger, impatiently finishes — 
 " words, words !" spoken as quickly as tongue could do. 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : Where Hamlet is asked what is 
 the matter which he reads, and he answers : " Slanders,'' 
 Mr. Kemble, to give the stronger impression of his wild- 
 ness, tore the leaf out of the book. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field): 
 
 "Conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive, 
 friend, look to 't." 
 
 It was a mad laugh that followed "friend." Flamlet 
 pointed to his open book as he muttered " look to 't," 
 
96 HAMLET. 
 
 and Polonius, literal in all things, ran his eye over the 
 page to learn the "cause of this defect." Hamlet 
 watched him narrowly as if to see how the simulated 
 madness took effect, when the old man delivered his side- 
 speech, beginning: 
 
 " How pregnant sometimes his replies are." 
 
 OPHELIA, 
 (Davies) : Till the sweet character of Ophelia was 
 personated by Mrs. Gibber, it was not well understood, 
 at least, for these last sixty years. Mrs. Betterton, says 
 Colley Gibber, was much celebrated for action in Shaks- 
 peare's plays, and Sir William Davenant gave her such 
 an idea of it as he could catch from the boy-Ophelias 
 he had seen before the civil wars. Mrs. Booth's figure, 
 voice and deportment in this part, raised in the minds 
 of the spectators an amiable picture of an innocent, un- 
 happy maid, but she went no further. Of Mrs. Olive's 
 Ophelia I shall only say that I regret that the first comic 
 actress in the world should so far mistake her talents as 
 to undertake it. No eloquence can paint the distressed 
 and distracted look of Mrs. Gibber while she uttered 
 the sentence : " Lord, we know what we are." No 
 actress has hitherto revived the idea of Mrs. Gibber's 
 Ophelia except Mrs. Baddeley, whose pleasing sensibility, 
 melodious voice and correspondent action made us less 
 regret the great actress in this part. 
 
 MODJESKA (Elwyn H. Barron, in Ghicago Inter- 
 Ocean, 1889): "The Ophelia of Mme. Modjeska was a 
 most gratifying surprise. Her success in the realization 
 
HAMLET. 97 
 
 of this sweetly chaste, and lovable, tender character 
 was so much beyond reasonable expectation that it 
 amounted to a triumph. * The most skeptical was pre- 
 pared to witness a well-considered, intelligent, artistic 
 representation of the character, but the most enthusias- 
 tic admirer of this actress hardly looked for a new and 
 exquisite creation that should dim memory of more 
 youthful Ophelias. But Mme. Modjeska gave to the 
 character not merely an artistic embellishment that was 
 interesting, but also she infused it with a sentimental 
 quality that awakened a sympathy deep, vital, loving, 
 and instantly demonstrated what value even to such 
 characters is the intelligence of the experienced actress 
 and the accomplished artiste. She made real the high- 
 minded attributes of the virtuous Ophelia, and defined 
 the depth of heart-sorrow and grieving that the conduct 
 of Hamlet put upon her. We do not remember ever 
 before to have seen the womanhood of Ophelia so beau- 
 tifully revealed. Mme. Modjeska's interpretation dif- 
 fered from others as much as her costuming of the part 
 is different from the conventional dress. Instead of 
 white robes in the mad-scene she appropriately wore a 
 colored silk gown, and in escaping this traditional 
 restriction she freed herself from all others that interfered 
 with a womanly, thoughtful, sorrow-acquainted treatment 
 of the character. Mme. Modjeska has done nothing 
 worthier of praise, and in giving us a new Ophelia has 
 not marred the ideal. 
 
98 HAMLET. 
 
 ENTER ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN. 
 
 Edmund Kean ( Hazlitt) : The manner- of Kean's 
 taking Guildenstern and Rosencrantz under each arm, 
 under the pretense of communicating his secret to them, 
 when he only means to trifle with them, had the finest 
 effect and was, we conceive, exactly in the spirit of the 
 character. So was the suppressed tone of irony in which 
 he ridicules those who gave ducats for his uncle's picture, 
 though they would make mouths at him, while his 
 father lived. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : Hamlet's reception to Rosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern was most cordial until he saw 
 his uncle's portrait around the neck of Guildenstern ; 
 then expression and manner changed, and the question, 
 "Were you not sent for?" was put eagerly, with sus- 
 picion of foul play which waxed stronger as he bade 
 them speak " to the purpose." Hamlet's rejoinder in 
 regard to his uncle's " picture in little," was illustrated 
 by taking up the picture pendent from Guildenstern's 
 neck. Then dropping it, he crossed to the right, and 
 made an aside, " There is something in this more than 
 natural, if philosophy could find it out." 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : At the words, " This 
 most excellent canopy, the air, look you — this brave o'er- 
 hanging" (he omitted the word firmament, as in the 
 folio), his voice, sombre and husky in the preceding 
 lines, suddenly darted upward like light, seemed to 
 penetrate the sky, to run all over the firmament, to 
 search out and give back the remotest echoes of heaven. 
 
HAMLET. 99 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : Of all who have acted the part no 
 one, perhaps, has ever done such complete justice to the 
 genius of Hamlet as Forrest did in his noble delivery 
 of the great speeches and soliloquies, with full observ- 
 ance of every requirement of measure, accent, inflec- 
 tion, and relative importance of thought. In the famous 
 description by Hamlet of the disenchanting effect of his 
 heavy-heartedness, the voice of Forrest brought the very 
 objects spoken of before the hearer, — the goodly frame, 
 the earth; the most excellent canopy, the air; the 
 brave overhanging firmament, the majestical roof fret- 
 ted with golden fire. And when, turning from the 
 beauty of the material universe, to the greater glory and 
 mystery of the divijje foster-child and sovereign of the 
 earth — Man, he altered the tone of admiration to a tone 
 of awe, his speech stirred the soul like the grandest 
 chords in the Requiem of Mozart, thrilling it with sub- 
 lime premonitions of its own infinity. 
 
 Macready (Hackett) : He wanted the philosophic 
 sententiousness requisite for an harmonious delivery of 
 the analysis of Man ; besides which he adopted the late 
 John Kemble's omission of the indefinite article a 
 before man. 
 
 (Mr. Hackett held that "when the wind is southerly 
 I know a hawk from a handsaw," should be rendered so 
 as to express the idea that even then when his intellect- 
 ual atmosphere was most befogged and impenetrable, 
 he knew enough to distinguish sych dissimilar things.) 
 
 Barry 'Si\3\A.\s:p:s^ {Saturday Review, K'^rW 6, \%6\): 
 When Mr. Barry Sullivan came out as Hamlet, a few 
 years ago, many persons attended the Haymarket for 
 
loo HAMLET. 
 
 the mere purpose of hearing him say, " I know a hawk 
 from a heron — pshaw ! " instead of the ordinary reading. 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : In act second it was quite 
 impossible to tell whether the actor's intention was to 
 depict the madness as real or assumed ; but, either way, 
 it was depicted with fidelity to truth, and with much 
 beauty of detail, throughout the colloquies with the two 
 courtiers and Polonius. Signor Rossi's management 
 of his eyes is here notably fine,, and the misery under- 
 lying an air of grotesque mystery and sardonic humor, 
 had an effect of rare pathos. 
 
 KemblE (Hackett) : Kemble used to instruct Guilden- 
 stern to attempt to go off before him in one of the 
 scenes — he checked the courtier by a severe look and 
 then walked off with much dignity; this would have 
 been good acting if there had been one syllable in the 
 text to warrant it. 
 
 THE SCENE WITH THE PLAYERS. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : " He that plays the 
 King shall be welcome," was uttered with eager empha- 
 sis, a momentary betrayal by Hamlet of his inner 
 thought; which, however, he masks immediately by a 
 running and cheery commentary on the other players. 
 
 Robert B. Mante^ll: 
 
 "Then came each actor on his ass. " 
 
 Hamlet says this, pointing to Polonius, to indicate the 
 meaning of a derisive word. 
 
HAMLET. loi 
 
 Edmund Kean (Hazlitt) : Whether the way in which 
 Mr. Kean hesitates in repeating the first hne of the 
 speech in the interview with the players, and then, after 
 several ineffectual attempts to recollect it, suddenly 
 hurries on with it, " The rugged Pyrrhus," etc., is in 
 perfect keeping, we have some doubt; but there was 
 great ingenuity in the thought; and the spirit and life 
 were beyond everything. 
 
 Garrick and Kemble (Boaden) : Garrick repeated 
 "The mobled queen," after the player as in doubt; 
 Kemble, as in sympathy. 
 
 Louis James (E. A. Dithmar): James rejects both 
 the " innobled " and the " unnobled " queen of fussy 
 commentators, and goes back, with Irving, to " mobled 
 queen;" but he does not repeat the phrase to himself 
 as if it called up a melancholy thought; instead he 
 speaks it lightly, glancing with a passing expression of 
 surprise at Guildenstern. This is the most noteworthy 
 new " point " he makes. The idea suggests an emi- 
 nently practical mind. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field): One knew by the tender 
 music of Hamlet's voice in exclaiming, 
 
 "O, Jephthah, judge of Israel — what a treasure had'st thou!" 
 
 that his thoughts were with the fair Ophelia, and it was 
 this memory that rendered him so gentle in checking 
 Polonius for interrupting the player, hushing him, com- 
 manding him by putting finger on lips with as much 
 kindness as if the old courtier was indeed a big baby; 
 Hamlet took up the text, "So: proceed you," and for 
 
103 HAMLET. 
 
 the first time the little word " so " was set in its proper 
 action. 
 
 Hamlet listened with such interest to the actor's 
 speech as to accompany it with unconscious pantomime, 
 and silent repetition of the words ; but Garrick did the 
 same. 
 
 "The mobled queen !" repeated Fechter's Hamlet, 
 thinking of his mother ; and, struck by the coincidence, 
 became so absorbed as to leave Polonius unchecked 
 when he again interrupted the actor. 
 
 (Fechter told Wilkie Collins that to speak with ease 
 and propriety, the one line : " What's Hecuba to him or 
 he to Hecuba," was a labor of weeks.) 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : Among the many delicate sha- 
 dings of character exemplified in the impersonation, one 
 of the quietest and best was the contrast of his sharp, 
 lawyer-like manner of cross-questioning Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern, and detecting that in the guise of friends 
 they were really spies, with the thoughtful and gracious 
 kindness of his dealing with the players. Seated part 
 of the time, he spoke to the poor actor like an old friend, 
 and called him back, when he was retiring, to add 
 another thought, and finally dismissed him, with a sym- 
 pathetic touch on the shoulder and a smile. 
 
 (Quoted by Furness) : The instructions to the 
 players were subdued and wholly unconventional. 
 After speaking a few sentences, he turned his back to 
 the player and walked toward a chair. He then passed 
 him and again approached, again retired, and, seating 
 himself, delivered the greater part of the speech in that 
 attitude. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 103 
 
 Rossi : What was to us a new reading, and one that 
 seems hardly authorized by what follows, was applying 
 the remark of Polonius at the end of the player's Hecuba- 
 :speech to Hamlet, who instead of the player is affected 
 to tears, and it is of Hamlet Polonius is made to say : 
 
 " Look, whether he has not turned his color and has tears in his eyes. 
 — Pray you no more." 
 
 (William Winter) : The application of "Look, whether 
 lie has not changed color," to Hamlet, instead of to 
 the player, in this scene, though entirely unjustifiable 
 and wrong, aided in making up still another stage-point 
 for the Prince — in one of those quick transitions which 
 foreign actors practice, and which surprise often mistakes 
 for genius. 
 
 SOLILOQUY CLOSING THE SECOND ACT. 
 
 WiLKS AND Garrick (Davies) : In the speaking of 
 this impassioned soliloquy Wilks had an ample field to 
 <lisplay the warmth of his disposition. The actor's gen- 
 uine temper sometimes combines itself so strongly with 
 the feelings appropriate to the character, that the scene 
 receives additional advantage from it. The various pas- 
 sages of the speech he felt with energy and expressed 
 with vehemence ; to give force to sentiment, this player 
 would sometimes strike the syllables with too much 
 ardor, and in the judicious ear create something like 
 dissonance rather than harmony ; but this was not fre- 
 quent with him. 
 
 In this situation of Hamlet, Barry was pleasingly ani- 
 mated ; but here it must be owned, that Garrick rose 
 
I04 HAMLET. 
 
 superior to all competition ; his self-expostulations, and 
 upbraidings of cowardice and pusillanimity, were 
 strongly pointed, and blended with marks of contempt- 
 uous indignation, the description of his uncle held up, 
 at once, a portrait of horror and derision. When he 
 closed his strong paintings with the epithet " ^2'«^/?5.r 
 villain," a tear of anguish gave a most pathetic softness- 
 to the whole passionate ebullition. One strong feature 
 of Hamlet's character is filial piety ; this Garrick pre- 
 served through the part. By restoring a few' lines, 
 which preceding Hamlets had omitted, he gave a vigor 
 as well as connection, to the various members of the 
 soliloquy. It is impossible to forget the more than 
 common attention of the audience, which his action and 
 change of voice commanded, when he pronounced : 
 
 " I have heard 
 
 That guilty creatures sitting at a play — " 
 
 and the following lines to the end of the act. 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : 
 
 ' ' The play's the thing 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King." 
 
 Booth emphasized "catch;" it was objected that he 
 should have emphasized " conscience," but he really em- 
 phasized both words, and all in due relation. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : The tremendous soliloquy 
 closing this act was marvelous in variety. Its gradual 
 crescendo and diminuendo was most artistic, while the 
 climax : 
 
 " The play's the thing, 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King,'' 
 
 came like a sudden revelation to a tortured brain and 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 i°S 
 
 was clutched at with all the energy with which nature 
 seizes upon forlorn hopes. 
 
 (George B. Woods) : In grandeur and magnetism 
 of gesture only Ristori, of all the artists who have 
 trod our stage within the last decade can be compared 
 to him. It is a sign of the genius of the man that the 
 audience never detects any incongruity, but watches 
 every instant of his presence on the stage with intense 
 eagerness, and recognizes with equal appreciation the 
 magnificent clutch with which he says : " I'll catch the 
 conscience of the King," and the graphic grace with 
 which he indicates for Polonius the outlines of the whale 
 in the sky. 
 
 Wilson Barrett : The word " kindless " villain was 
 pronounced short as in the first line Hamlet speaks — 
 meaning " childless villain." [The King had been but 
 recently married.] Instead of ending the second act 
 with this soliloquy, Mr. Barrett continues the act till after 
 the scene with Ophelia, the act ending with the King's 
 
 " Madness in great ones.'' 
 This brings the " rogue and peasant " speech and the 
 " To be " soliloquy very near together, and the change 
 from passion to philosophy is one difficult to make, but 
 the division, in itself, is natural. 
 
 (In the 1623 folio there is no division of the play into 
 either acts or scenes after the second scene of the second 
 act.) 
 
 Rossi (William Winter): "The play's the thing," 
 being wrongly but powerfully spoken with the violence 
 of an Italian bravo, gave still another electric shock. 
 
io6 HAMLET. 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R. Russell) : A silly prac- 
 tice has prevailed among Hamlets of uttering "The 
 play's the thing," as if the idea had just struck them. 
 Irving makes them partly the culmination of a line of 
 thought, and partly the natural accompaniment of a 
 most striking action. With an exuberance exactly cor- 
 responding in another groove of feeling with the 
 quasi-hysterical use of the tablets in the first act, he 
 rushes to a pillar and placing his note-book against it, 
 begins, as the act-drop descends, to scribble hints for 
 the speech he means to write. 
 
 Louis James (E. A. Dithmar) : All the first part of 
 the soliloquy beginning, " Oh what a rogue," James 
 omits; after the players' exit he begins abruptly and 
 fiercely with : 
 
 " I have heard 
 That guilty creatures sitting at a play," 
 
 and brings down the act-drop amid clamorous applause. 
 
 LUDWIG Barnay (E. a. Dithmar): In his reading 
 of the first soliloquy, " O, what a rogue," the actor is 
 beyond criticism. The music of his voice has an irre- 
 sistible effect. The passion of the scene is communi- 
 cated to the audience, and the climax is of splendid 
 force. 
 
 ACT III.— "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE ?" 
 
 WiLKS, Barry and Garrick (Davies): Wilks 
 
 spoke this soliloquy with a pleasing melancholy of 
 
 countenance and grave despondency of action. He 
 
 was less skilful in the utterance of sentiment than pas- 
 
HAMLET. 107 
 
 sion. His greatest fault in deportment proceeded from 
 his aptness to move or shift his ground. It was said of 
 him by a sour critic that he could never stand still. 
 
 Barry, not having middle tones in his voice, could not 
 give the requisite grave energy to sentiment; he was, 
 therefore, obliged in some situations of character, to 
 raise his powers of speech above their ordinary tone. 
 Garrick, by an expressive countenance and flexible 
 voice, gave full force to the profound reflections of this 
 meditation on futurity, which he pursued through all 
 their progress, with exquisite judgment and address. 
 
 Garrick (Murdoch) : Garrick's reading of Hamlet's 
 soliloquy on death appears (from Sir Joshua Steele's 
 Speech Notation) to have been an impressive and tran- 
 quil utterance of reflective thought, without impassioned 
 or demonstrative emphasis or significant accentual stress ; 
 with little or no distinction of loud or soft, but nearly 
 uniform, something below ordinary force or, as Steele 
 said, " sotto voce or poco piano." 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : " Perchance to dream." Kemble 
 prolonged the word dream meditatingly. 
 
 Edmund Kean (Hazlitt) : Kean's speech in describ- 
 ing his own melancholy, his instructions to the players, 
 and the soliloquy on death, were all delivered in a tone 
 of fine, clear and natural recitation. His pronunciation 
 of the word " contumely " in the last of these is, we ap- 
 prehend, not authorized by custom, or by the metre. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : The beginning of the 
 meditation, " To be, or not to be," was uttered in a voice 
 
io8 HAMLET. 
 
 like the mystic murmur of a river running underground, 
 and required an attentive ear. "That undiscovered 
 country" (in a manner unimaginably remote) "from 
 whose bourne no traveler returns " — given with acceler- 
 ated and vibrating intensity, the stroke of emphasis 
 coming surprisingly on the last word. It shocked the 
 elocutionist, but delighted the Shakspearian scholar. 
 The soliloquy was marked by a curious reading — thus : 
 
 " For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 When lie himself might his quietus make ? " 
 
 Here he made a full stop. Then, as if beginning a new 
 sentence, and without pause in the delivery of it, he 
 went on : 
 
 " With a bare bodkin who would fardels bear, etc." 
 
 He affirmed that bodkin was a local term in some parts 
 of England for a padded yoke worn over the shoulders 
 for the burden on either side ; and that a dare bodkin 
 was a yoke without the pad, and therefore galling. 
 
 Macready (Hackett) : He lacked the semblance of 
 profound abstraction and of deep meditativeness — that 
 absence of action and motion — I may say that almost 
 statue-like station which is natural to a mind absorbed 
 in philosophical and metaphysical self-debate, whilst the 
 general physique of the man seemed in a state of com- 
 plete repose. It was very inferior to the manner of Ed- 
 mund Kean or of Charles Young. In the sentence : 
 " To die ? to sleep. No more ! " 
 
 the last two words were an interrogatory and as though 
 they involved the continuity of a question instead of de- 
 noting an emphatic and responsive exclamation of a 
 
HAMLET. 109 
 
 conclusive reflection upon his own preceding answer to 
 his self-inquiry. 
 
 Macready and Charles Kean (Sheffield Tele- 
 ^rapli'i : Macready, though always impressive and grand, 
 may be credited with a large share of the responsibility 
 for the existence of that numerous school of heavy tra- 
 gedians who emphasize their r's to treble power, and 
 make their final syllables ring and re-echo into ridicu- 
 lous results. " To-er be-er, or-re nott-er be," was the 
 kind of declamation to which the great artist's auditors 
 were often treated. Charles Kean, in addition to the 
 misfortune of having a great father, which led him to 
 say that his eminent parent was the greatest enemy of 
 his life, labored under the peculiar disadvantage of a 
 kind of continuous catarrh, which gave rise to a soliloquy 
 of this complexion : " To be, or dot to be ; ch'dat is the 
 queschdion." 
 
 Edwin Booth (Mrs. Clarke) : In a discussion with 
 Henry Tuckerman of New York, that gentleman who 
 had witnessed many of the old actors, observed to Booth 
 that they all stood during the soliloquies, and inquired 
 if it were not possible to alter this. On the next repre- 
 sentation, Booth seated, began the soliloquy : " To be, 
 or not to be," Mr. Tuckerman watching the play could 
 not conceive how Hamlet could rise from that chair with 
 propriety and grace. When at the words, " to sleep, 
 perchance to dream," after an instant of reflection, during 
 which the mind of Hamlet had penetrated the eternal 
 darkness vivid with dreams, he rose with the terror of 
 that terrible " perchance " stamped upon his features, 
 
no HAMLET. 
 
 continuing : " Ay, there's the rub." His friend was sat- 
 isfied that the actor had caught the inspiration of the 
 lines in that reflective pause. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field): Fechter pointed the moral 
 of the soliloquy by bringing on an unsheathed sword as- 
 if he had again been contemplating the suicide that 
 would free him from his oath. 
 
 (J. H. Fitzpatrick) : In his rendering of the soliloquy- 
 on death, he rushed upon the stage with frantic impa- 
 tience with drawn sword, and delivered the first line : 
 " To be, or not to be," with spasmodic earnestness as if 
 the question must be instantly decided, a treatment 
 wholly unlike the measured, systematic precision with 
 which the lines have always been given. It was the 
 continuation rather than the beginning of a process, nor 
 did he once fall into the preoccupied, apathetic style so^ 
 prevalent. 
 
 Rossi (WiUiam Winter) : The suicide-speech was said 
 with perfect elocution, and Signor Rossi was more like 
 Hamlet in the saying of it than at any other moment in 
 the entire performance. 
 
 E. L. Davenport (New York Times) : The soliloquy 
 " To be, or not to be," was spoken with rare discretion. 
 The reading was in no sense declamatory or objective,. 
 but on the contrary, it fulfilled the idea of introspection 
 which the text implies. It was clearly a self-communiort 
 concerning the solemn issues of existence or non-exist- 
 ence, and not an out-spoken utterance enforcing a 
 theory or balancing a doubt. 
 
E. L, DAVENPORT. 
 
HAMLET. in 
 
 Robert B. Mantell : The soliloquy was recited for 
 the most part, as he sat in a lounging attitude on the 
 footstool of the throne. 
 
 Garrick (G. C. Lichtenberg, 1775, quoted in Fur- 
 ness's "Variorum Shakspeafe") : In the celebrated 
 soliloquy " To be, or not to be," Hamlet having already 
 begun to assume the madman, appears with hair all in 
 disorder, locks of it hanging down over one shoulder, 
 one of his black stockings has fallen down, allowing 
 the white under-stocking to be visible, and a loop of his 
 red garter hangs down midway of the calf of his leg. 
 Then he slowly comes to the front, wrapt in thought, 
 his chin resting on his right hand, and the elbow of his 
 right arm in his left hand ; his looks are bent with great 
 dignity, sidewise to the ground. Taking his right hand 
 from his chin, but holding the arm still supported by 
 his left hand, he utters the words "To be, or not to be," 
 softly, but, on account of the profound stillness, audi- 
 ble all over the house. 
 
 LUDWIG Barnay (E. a. Dithmar) : We do not like 
 his use of the dagger in the sohloquy on immortality. 
 Hamlet has not got so close to the idea of self-slaughter 
 as that device implies. Barnay 's treatment of this 
 soliloquy, indeed, seems fussy and undignified. His 
 rich voice produces strangely harsh and unpleasant 
 tones in delivering the beautiful words, and his bearing 
 and gesticulation suggest a mood of nervous irritability 
 rather than one of profound sorrow and deep contem- 
 plation. There is nothing novel in this way of treating 
 the "To be, or not to be." English actors have deliv- 
 
112 HAMLET. 
 
 ered this soliloquy in every conceivable manner. It has 
 been ranted and chanted and muttered and jerked out 
 in occasional mouthfuls as if the Dane was suffering 
 from an impediment of speech. And for every manner 
 there has been an elaborate system of reasoning to show 
 that each is the only correct way, the way Shakspeare 
 himself would have read the passage. 
 
 Barnay's treatment of this soliloquy, however, seems 
 to be in harmony with his conception of Hamlet. The 
 Prince he presents is a man of energy, possessed of 
 great nervous force, a man of action seemingly inert 
 and reflective under the force of a spell. This may be 
 the Hamlet of Shakspeare. 
 
 SCENE WITH OPHELIA. 
 
 (Davies) : The assumed madness with Ophelia was, 
 by Garrick, in my opinion, too boisterous. He should 
 have remembered that he was reasoning with a young 
 lady, to whom he had professed the tenderness of pas- 
 sion. Wilks retained enough of disguised madness, but, 
 at the same time, preserved the feelings of a lover, and 
 the delicacy of a gentleman. Barry was not so violent 
 as Garrick, and was, consequently, nearer to the intention 
 of the author. Sheridan, Smith and Henderson have 
 all, in this scene, avoided a manner too outrageous. 
 
 Edmund Kean (Hazlitt) : Had there been less 
 vehemence of effort in Kean's remonstrance with Ophe- 
 lia, the scene would not have lost any of its effect. But 
 whatever nice faults might be found in this scene they 
 were amply redeemed by the manner of his coming back 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 "3 
 
 after he had gone to the extremity of the stage, from a 
 pang of parting tenderness to press his lips to Ophelia's 
 hand. It had an electrical effect upon the house. It 
 was the finest commentary ever made on Shakspeare. 
 It explained the character at once (as he meant it) as 
 one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, of affection 
 suspended and not obliterated by the distractions of the 
 scene around him. 
 
 (Hackett) : After the words " To a nunnery, go ! " 
 and departing abruptly out of sight of his audience, 
 Kean came on the stage again and approached slowly 
 the amazed Ophelia still remaining in the centre, took 
 her hand gently, and, after gazing steadily and earnestly 
 in her face for a few seconds, and with a marked ex- 
 pression of tenderness in his own countenance, appeared 
 to be choked in his efforts to say something, smothered 
 her hand with passionate kisses and rushed wildly and 
 finally from her presence. 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : Kemble spoke the word " lisp " 
 with one " lithp," a refinement below him. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : In spite of the set 
 purpose, his deep love burst forth in jets of passionate 
 tenderness. He spoke with wildness rather than with 
 serenity. He was in constant action; striding across 
 the stage ; passing out, still speaking, and beginning the 
 next speech before he reentered. Only when implor- 
 ing her to go to nunnery did iie pause in action, then 
 approaching her tenderly, he threw into those oft-re- 
 peated words " to a nunnery, go," the whole force of 
 his fervent affection. 
 
114 HAMLET. 
 
 (Mr. Gould thinks there is no warrant for Hamlet'? 
 catching glimpses of the King and his minister at espial ; 
 but that all Hamlet's speeches can be otherwise ac- 
 counted for.) 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field): Very beautiful and equally- 
 original was Hamlet's scene with Ophelia. He was a 
 lover the moment his eyes fell upon her, and he cast 
 aside every semblance of madness until Ophelia re- 
 turned his letters, when the change of Fechter's expres- 
 sion was as great as the change of language ; but when 
 listening to the gentle maiden's reproaches there was 
 pictured such agonized regret at throwing away every 
 chance of happiness, as made the heart ache. When 
 reference was made to the power of beauty, Fechter 
 paused, looked sadly at the letters in his hand and then 
 added, " but now the time gives it proof." The confes- 
 sion " I did love you once," was given with tearful eyes 
 and choked utterance. When Ophelia exclaimed, " I 
 was the more deceived," Fechter's tender action unseen 
 by her, denoted that he must fold her in his arms ; but 
 forced to restrain, he honestly, earnestly begged her 
 to get to a nunnery, as the only sanctuary worthy of 
 her. Then seeing Polonius, he to test Ophelia's truth- 
 fulness, asked, "Where's your father?" and finding her 
 false, burst into frenzied raving intended far more for 
 the ears of her father than for the helpless creature 
 trembling before him. Again subdued by love, Hamlet 
 approached Ophelia with extended arms, almost em- 
 braced her, but, recollecting that he was watched by 
 Polonius, cried pathetically, " To a nunnery, go," and 
 rushed off the stage thoroughly overcome. In this 
 
HAMLET. IIS 
 
 scene Fechter did not allow himself to see the King, for 
 this espionage would so convince him of his uncle's 
 guilt as to render the play unnecessary. 
 
 Macready caused both the King and Polonius to 
 appear and to make some noise in retreating so as to 
 attract the attention of Hamlet. Mr. Hackett thought 
 it unreasonable that the King should show himself at 
 all, and inconsistent for Hamlet, who had been striving 
 in various ways to divert the King from any suspicion 
 that he was^watching him, to walk up close to the place 
 of concealment and vociferate his parting speech — one 
 evidently intended to be but partly heard even by 
 Ophelia — the threat respecting the King, "Those that 
 are married already (all but one) shall live," etc. 
 
 Salvini (Lewes) : The scene with Ophelia was a rev- 
 elation. Instead of roaring and scolding at her like 
 other actors, with a fierce rudeness which is all the more 
 incomprehensible that they do not represent Hamlet as 
 mad, Salvini is strange, enigmatical, but always tender ; 
 and his advice " To a nunnery, go," is the mournful 
 advice of a heart-broken lover, not the insult of a bully 
 or an angry pedagogue. 
 
 Wilson Barrett (Dramatic Notes) : Mr. Barrett was 
 quite free from all show of tenderness in the scene with 
 Ophelia, a somewhat remarkable point, as in this he 
 differs from nearly all previous Hamlets. 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : The drift of the scene with 
 Opheha was confused, as to the element of madness, by 
 having Polonius momentarily discovered in the middle 
 
ii6 HAMLET. 
 
 of it, instead of showing him at the beginning. Either* 
 the paroxysm is real, and is brought on by Ophelia's 
 repulse, or it is assumed, out of a consciousness of the 
 treacherous ambuscade. It cannot be both at once. 
 The telling quality here was the despairing tenderness 
 toward Ophelia. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865): The 
 scene is handsomely set as an audience-chamber. A 
 stately, double staircase leads to a gallery, from which 
 small doors open on the corridors without. In a deep, 
 embayed window Ophelia kneels. From a low-arched 
 door beneath the stairway glides the Prince, his head 
 bent, his hands clasped before him, his step slow and 
 uncertain. He steadies himself by the balustrade, moves 
 on again mechanically, is stopped by a chair, sinks into 
 it, .still silent, utterly absorbed. In another moment the 
 " To be, or not to be " is uttered in a voice at first 
 almost inaudible. Rising suddenly and crossing toward 
 the window, he sees Ophelia. His whole face changes. 
 A lovely tenderness suffuses it. Sweetness fills his 
 tones as he addresses her. When, with exquisite soft- 
 ness of manner, he draws nearer to her, he catches a 
 glimpse of the " lawful espials " in the gallery above. 
 When he says suddenly, "Where's your father?" he 
 lays his hand on Ophelia's head, and turns her face up 
 to his as he stands above her. She answers, looking 
 straight into the eyes that love her, " At home, my 
 Lord." No accusation, no reproach could be so terrible 
 as the sudden plucking away of his hand and the pain 
 of his face as he turns from her. The whole scene he 
 plays as one distract. He is never still. Hestrides up 
 
HAMLET. 1,7 
 
 and down the stage, in and out at the door, speaking 
 outside with the same rapidity and vehemence. The 
 speech " I have heard of your paintings," he begins in 
 the outer room, and the contemptuous words hiss as 
 they fall. '■ It hath made me mad," was uttered with a 
 flutter of the hand about the head more expressive than 
 words. As he turned toward Ophelia for the last time, 
 all the bitterness, all the reckless violence seemed to 
 die out of him ; his voice was full of unutterable love, 
 of appealing tenderness, of irrevocable doom, as he 
 uttered the last, " To a nunnery, go ! " and tottered from 
 the room as one who could not see for tears. 
 
 Henry Irving (Lady Hardy) : His tender, nay, pas- 
 sionate love for Ophelia, breaks through all bounds ; 
 his stern resolution, wherewith he holds it in bonds of 
 iron, cannot keep it down ; his nervous hands tremble 
 at the touch of her garments ; we see that, against his 
 will, his whole soul goes out to her; his face is alive 
 with passion; he loses himself in his emotions; he 
 struggles to tear himself away from her, but again and 
 again, as by a human magnet, he is drawn back ; in a 
 storm of feelings he flings harsh words at the fair young 
 creature, while his heart is breaking for love of her ; 
 and even as his outspread hands are raised to thrust her 
 from him, his eyes cling despairingly to her face. One 
 moment we feel he must close longing arms around her, 
 or fall sobbing at her feet; the next he thrusts her from 
 him, and with a " soupgon de brntalitie" as cruel as it 
 is cowardly, overwhelms her with satirical scorn, and 
 shrinks shuddering away, bidding her " go to a nun- 
 nery." 
 
ii8 HAMLET. 
 
 (Edward R. Russell, 1875) : When he begins to talk 
 •with Ophelia, he is on his guard. An instinct warns 
 him to shun the distractions and wooings of the pas- 
 sion. Yet the fair Ophelia is before him, and the love 
 of forty thousand brothers is in his heart. He has no 
 shield, no disguise, but his antic disposition, and he 
 puts it on. The rule with modern Hamlets is to pre- 
 tend to be mad later, when they have perceived the 
 " lawful espials." This is not Irving's idea. It is in the 
 coolness of the opening conversation that he affects 
 the forgetfulness, the eccentricity, the insensibility of 
 derangement. The excitement, however, as it mounts, 
 is too much for him. Then suddenly he sees Polonius 
 and the King, and the climax comes. But not in the 
 shape of pretended madness. Rather does his lunacy 
 become all but real and pronounced. " Let the doors 
 be shut on him" — these are the last words he can say 
 with any degree of sanity. His first sudden "farewell" 
 is a frantic ebullition of all-encompassing, all-racking 
 pain. What was till now histrionic, passes, as the his- 
 trionic phase of highly strung natures easily does, into 
 real frenzy. His words come faster and wilder. His 
 eyes flash with a more sinister lightning as he gives 
 Ophelia the plague of inevitable calumny for her dowry. 
 Again " farewell," and now he rushes forth, but only to 
 return laden, as it were, with a new armful of hastily- 
 gathered missiles of contumely. He is getting now to 
 the very leavings of his mind. He has nothing to hurl 
 at his love but the commonplaces of men against wo- 
 men. A flash of frenzy, and he has quitted the scene. 
 
 Louis James (E. A. Dithmar) : Mr. James's Hamlet 
 
HAMLET. . 119 
 
 ■goes off the scene three times during the colloquy with 
 Ophelia, only to return and renew h"s imprecations ; 
 the result is aa artistic botch, and four rounds of ap- 
 plause from the gallery. 
 
 Charles Kean (Michael Nugent in London Times, 
 1838) : Mr. Kean was wholly different from any perscn 
 Ave have ever seen before in the character. There was 
 -violence enough in his manner to justify the grossly 
 lascivious King in saying, 
 
 "Love ! his affections do not that way tend." 
 
 tut there was also enough of tenderness and delicacy to 
 show to tenderer and more delicate minds that his very 
 heart-strings were breaking while in his assumed frenzy 
 he was saying unkind things to one whom he entirely 
 loved. 
 
 (Cole) : We believe Charles Kean was the first actor 
 of Hamlet of any note who gave up the old traditionary 
 custom of having a stocking " downgyved to the 
 ankle," — a piece of literal rendering sufficiently vulgar 
 and certainly "more honored in the breach than in the 
 observance." 
 
 Kemble CCole) : John Kemble wore an elephant 
 suspended by a blue ribbon from his neck, and a mod- 
 ern star on his cloak Hke that belonging to an English 
 order of knighthood. The Order of the Elephant was 
 instituted by Christiern, who began to reign in 1448, 
 whereas the action of Hamlet was several centuries 
 earlier. Besides, if it were proper for Hamlet to have 
 this effeminate appendage of a badge and ribbon, then 
 the King ought to be decorated after the same fashion. 
 
I20 HAMLET. 
 
 James E. Murdoch: My first appearance in the- 
 character of Hamlet was in the Park Theatre, New York^ 
 in 1845, where my friend, Mr. Thomas Barry, was the 
 stage-manager. Mr. Barry was one of the Kemble- 
 school, and in his own acting much given to a stately 
 style of speech and bearing. Hamlet, in his mind, was. 
 not only to be dressed in black, but " steeped to the 
 very lips in gloom," sombre in mood, and grave and 
 deliberate in utterance and gait. The even tenor of his- 
 princely demeanor was never to be disturbed by ther 
 slightest manifestation of levity, or even thoughtlessness,, 
 no matter how much the language of the part might 
 suggest such departure. I remember his astonishment 
 when I told him that I did not intend to wear a black 
 plume, and that it reminded me of the decoration of a. 
 hearse. "Why, my dear sir," said he, "had you ever- 
 seen John Philip Kemble in that character, as he stood, 
 in the glare of the court attired in his suit of sables^ 
 grand and gloomy, with his noble features shaded by 
 the dark waving plumes of his hat, you would never 
 consent to trust yourself to the bald effect of an un- 
 covered head." 
 
 Bernhardt (Knight) : When first seen in her father's- 
 house, looking stately and beautiful as Guinevere, hold- 
 ing the small framework on which she is weaving a pat- 
 tern of flowers or birds, she is passionately in love with, 
 Hamlet, and ripely content with the declaration that she 
 has just received of his returned affection. To justify 
 this faith the poetical epistle of Hamlet, which in the 
 English play is read in a later scene to the King and 
 Queen by Polonius, is introduced in the second scene- 
 
HAMLET. 121 
 
 and is read by Ophelia to Polonius, who is questioning 
 his daughter concerning the intentions of Hamlet. Con- 
 cerning these Ophelia has no doubt. Radiant and rapt- 
 urous in self-content, she bends down, her eyes brim- 
 ming with happiness, and listens with no thought of 
 doubt or mistrust to the suggestions of her brother and 
 the more outspoken counsels of her father. In propor- 
 tion as her faith in Hamlet is firm at the outset, her 
 perplexity and grief at his sudden withdrawal of his 
 affections are tearful. That his brain is touched she 
 knows, but she is none the less distracted at his bearing. 
 With eyes streaming with tears she listens to his cruel 
 words, throwing herself finally in front of a picture of 
 the Virgin, whose intercession she piteously invokes. 
 As a picture of love and distress, this is delicious. It 
 has, however, little to do with Hamlet. 
 
 INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PLAYERS. 
 (Davies) : Wilks, I believe, never spoke the speech to 
 the players, and I conjecture it was omitted from the 
 death of Betterton till the good taste of Garrick revi^^ed 
 it. Garrick delivered these theatrical precepts with 
 more force than propriety ; but he did not accompany 
 them with the condescending quality expected from the 
 high-bred man of rank. He rather sustained the office 
 of stage-manager, and consummate master of the art, 
 than that of the generous friend and princely monitor. 
 Mr. Henderson has, in this scene, less of the pedagogue 
 and more of the gentleman. 
 
122 HAMLET. 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : On the first night of his Hamlet, 
 Mr. Kemble omitted the instructions to the players 
 upon the modest principle that he must first be admitted 
 a master in the faculty before he presumed to censure 
 the faults of others. He restored them afterward and 
 gave the lesson very divertingly, " Some of Nature's 
 journeymen," with an arch smile, and becoming graver 
 as he followed it by " they imitated humanity so 
 abominably." 
 
 Fechter was the first to introduce a boy with chop- 
 pins in lieu of a woman actress. 
 
 Macready : 
 
 " They are coming to the play; I must be idle." 
 Macready here danced before the footlights, flirting a 
 white handkerchief over his head, for which he was 
 hissed by Forrest. 
 
 The Elder Booth retired up the stage, passed 
 from view, and reappearing like a shadow, was last in 
 the company that enters to witness the play. 
 
 THE PLAY-SCENE. 
 
 " It was a brute part of him," etc. 
 Macready : Macready, behind the screen of assumed 
 madness, insulted the old courtier and Lord Chamber- 
 lain in presence of the court, instead of muttering the 
 latter part of the sentence to himself (as Hackett 
 thought would have been better) . 
 
HAMLET. 123 
 
 GarricK threw out as unnecessary rant the hne, 
 "The croaking raven bellows for revenge." 
 
 Kemble gave the argument of the play in the finest 
 manner possible. 
 
 Edmund Kean (Hazlitt) : The manner in which Mr. 
 Kean acted in the scene of the play before the King 
 and Queen was the most daring of any, and the force 
 and animation which he gave to it cannot be too highly 
 applauded. Its extreme boldness " bordered on the 
 verge of all we hate," and the effect it produced was the 
 test of the extraordinary powers of an extraordinary 
 actor. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : In 1831, when Charles 
 Kean played Hamlet in the Baltimore Theatre, Junius 
 Brutus Booth, being temporary manager, took the part 
 of " the second actor," having only six lines to say. 
 Every word of the fearful lines dropped poison. The 
 weird music of his voice, and the stealthy yet decisive 
 action, made this brief scene the memorable event of 
 the night. 
 
 Macready (Hackett) : " Oh, they do but jest. 
 POISON in jest ! " etc. Mr. Macready, under a comic 
 guise, brought out that interjection with great pungency 
 and admirable effect. 
 
 John Vandenhoff (Hackett): In the play-scene, 
 while Lucianus was reciting his last speech and prepar- 
 ing to poison the player-King, Mr. Vandenhoff, as Ham- 
 let, began to creep catlike across the stage, and, thus 
 approaching the footstool of his uncle-King, just as the 
 
124 HAMLET. 
 
 actor-murderer had finished his invocation and com- 
 menced pouring poison into his victim's ear, struck 
 Claudius a smart blow upon his knee with Ophelia's fan, 
 and, rising simultaneously, with violent gesticulation, 
 vociferated, 
 
 " He poisons him in the garden for his estate," 
 which sent the King packing, as well it might. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : Hamlet gazed fondly at 
 Ophelia when announcing the court's coming to the 
 play, showing first the lover before putting on the mask. 
 He never forgot to spare Polonius in the presence of 
 others. " I was killed i' the capitol; Brutus killed me," 
 maunders the old man. "It was a brute part of him," 
 Hamlet replied, and then walking away, added as an 
 aside, "to kill so capital a calf — there." 
 
 " Nay, then, let the devil wear black 'fore /'ll have a suit of sables,'' 
 
 was Fechter's rendering, authorized by the folio. 
 
 Most Hamlets insult Ophelia by hurling the reply, 
 " as woman's love," at her. Fechter gave it as if com- 
 muning with his own thoughts, and looked the while at 
 his mother. 
 
 " That's wormwood," was addressed to Horatio ; and 
 " If she should break it now," to King and Queen. 
 
 During the play Fechter, play-book before him, fol- 
 lowed the text closely, thus anticipating it and watching 
 the effect upon the royal pair. Discovery made and 
 audience gone, Fechter tore the leaves from the play- 
 book and scattered them in the air as he rose and de- 
 livered the quatrain with rapid utterance, growing thick 
 under increased excitement; he put his hand to his 
 throat as if choking; "ah, ha!" became a gasp; he 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 I2S 
 
 leaned upon Horatio, and, for relief, for solace, called 
 for music. Upon the entrance of Guildenstern and 
 Hosencrantz he fell into a chair exhausted, until his 
 mother's name was mentioned, when out of courtesy he 
 Tose. Guildenstern, with the locket about his neck, was 
 more hateful to Hamlet than the less treacherous Ro- 
 sencrantz. He snubs Guildenstern, and addressed "my 
 mother, you say,'' to Rosencrantz, who immediately 
 takes up the thread of the argument. 
 
 (J. H. Fitzpatrick) : Fechter's " play-scene " was es- 
 pecially elaborate and imposing. A conception of the 
 magnitude of its detail may be faintly realized when we 
 state that it was composed of more than 250 separate 
 set pieces and appointments, taking fifty men twenty 
 minutes to set it. It was painted by the celebrated 
 painter, Mr. Telbin. The scene was one grand pageant. 
 
 Salvini (Lewes) : The growing intensity of emotion 
 -during the play-scene culminates in a great outburst of 
 tremendous rage as he wildly flings into the air the 
 leaves of the manuscript he had been biting a second 
 Tjefore, and falls exhausted on Horatio's neck. 
 
 GarRICK (Davies) : " For some must laugh, etc." In 
 the uttering of this line and a half it was Garrick's con- 
 stant practice to pull out a white handkerchief, and 
 walking about the stage twirl it round with vehemence. 
 
 Wilson Barrett : The play-scene was arranged to 
 take place on the very spot in the garden where the real 
 murder occurred. Mr. Clement Scott says : " The idea 
 •of the play-scene occurring in the open air so grows on 
 the spectator that it will be strange if it is not always so 
 
126 HAMLET. 
 
 represented. To make it perfect the innovation might 
 have gone further, and introduced, in addition to the 
 procession of players and attendants passing to the show^ 
 a splendid procession of King, Queen and court thread- 
 ing their way by torchlight with music to the appointed 
 spot in the garden where the temporary platform is 
 erected. There is one very strong point in favor of the- 
 out-of-door play-scene, namely, the interview with Polo- 
 nius in which Hamlet points out to him the clouds ia 
 the heavens. When done in a room with a roof over it^ 
 it has always appeared absurd." 
 
 Barrett stood aloft on the mimic stage as he declaimed 
 on the confusion and departure of the King, and thea 
 sank exhausted into Horatio's arms. 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : In the play-scene Hamlet 
 was very full of theatrical antics ; offensive to Polonius ; 
 insolent to the King ; turbulent to Ophelia ; obstreper- 
 ous ; manifestly to all about him putting an affront upoa 
 his sovereign; and thoroughly melodramatic in de- 
 meanor ; and at the climax he headed off the fugacious 
 King, with the alacrity of a lad in a game of baseball — 
 so that His Majesty screamed in his face. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865) : Dur- 
 ing the court-play, Hamlet lies at Ophelia's feet, watch- 
 ing the guilty King with ever fiercer regard. As the 
 action proceeds he creeps toward him, and, as the mimic 
 murder is accomplished, he springs up with a cry like 
 an avenging spirit. It seemed to drive the frightened 
 court before it. In an instant he is alone with Horatio^ 
 and staggering forward he falls on his neck with the 
 long, loud, mirthless laugh of a madman. When he 
 
ROSSI. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 i^f 
 
 lifts his face it is one over which ten years have passed, 
 yet with a fierce gladness upon it as of a man to whom 
 a blocked way is open, though it lead through blood. 
 
 Henry Irving (Edward R.Russell, 1875): Before 
 the spectators enter, his demeanor is not subtle and con- 
 triving, but anxious, and his looks are haggard. He 
 has set more than his life upon the cast. But when the 
 King and Queen and courtiers enter, he becomes gay 
 and insouciant. Ophelia's fan, with which he plays, is 
 of peacock's feathers, and as he lies at her feet, patting 
 his breast with it, at the words : " Your Majesty and we 
 that have free souls," the feathers themselves are not 
 lighter than his spirits seem. In his double-meaning 
 replies to the King there is none of that malignant sig- 
 nificance with which it is the custom of Hamlets to dis- 
 count the coming victory. His " no offence i' the 
 world," is said drily, and that is all. His watching of 
 the King is not conspicuous. He does not crawl pre- 
 maturely toward him or seize his robe. Even up to the 
 crisis, although his excitement rises, his spirits bear him 
 almost sportively through. But when once the King 
 and Queen start from their chairs Hamlet springs from 
 the ground, darts with a shrill scream to the seats from 
 which they vanished like ghosts, flings himself — a happy 
 thought — into the chair which the King had vacated, his 
 body swaying the while from side to side in irrepressible 
 excitement, and recites there the well known : " Why let 
 the strucken deer go weep." A still greater, because 
 wild and bizarre, effect follows, as Hamlet leaves the 
 chair, and in a sort of jaunty, nonsense rhythm, chants 
 the seldom-used lines : 
 
128 HAMLET. 
 
 " For thou dost know, O Damon dear, 
 This reahn dismantled was 
 Of Jove himself, and now reigns here 
 A very, very — peacock." 
 
 At the last word, said suddenly, after a pause, he 
 looks at Ophelia's fan, which he has kept till now, and 
 throws it away, as if it had suggested a word and was 
 done with. 
 
 Bernhardt (Knight) : In the play-scene, Mme. Bern- 
 hardt yields for the moment to the delusion that Ham- 
 let's love has returned, and that matters are once more 
 right. In obedience to her own suggestion Hamlet lies 
 almost in her lap. His head, which rests on her knees, 
 she gently fans, and she stoops over him with a caress- 
 ing affection which renders her insensible to the presence 
 of her father and the court. Soon, however, perceiving 
 that whatever else is occupying his attention, it is not 
 herself, she turns listlessly to the play, and watches it 
 until the King's fright and the passionate outbreak of 
 Hamlet send her, in common with the rest of the com- 
 pany, scared from the chamber. 
 
 Garrick (Cole) : Garrick, with all his genius, was a 
 very methodical actor; when he had once settled on 
 what was the business of a part, he never altered it. In 
 the play-scene, when he has satisfied himself that he has 
 detected the guilt of the King, he wound up his burst 
 of exultation at the close by three flourishes of his 
 pocket handkerchief over his head, as he paced the 
 stage backward and forward. It was once remarked 
 as an extraordinary deviation, that he added a fourth 
 flourish. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 129 
 
 AFTER THE PLAY. 
 MacREADY (Hackett): "With drink, sir." Instead 
 of an interrogation he uttered the words rapidly and in 
 a tone of exclamation, denoting an unquestionable con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Rossi (London Athenczum, 1876) Hamlet, in speaking 
 to Guildenstern, says : " There is much music, excellent 
 voice in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak." 
 Instead of representing, as is customary, the recorder as 
 the little organ, Signer Rossi slaps his chest as though it 
 was his own voice to which reference was made. 
 
 Kemble : The reference to Rosencrantz after Guild- 
 enstern with the pipe : " I do beseech you" was consid- 
 ered a Kemble innovation. Boaden thought that actor's 
 stately march from one to the other a poor thing, chill- 
 ing what was to follow, and too formal for the condition 
 of Hamlet's mind. 
 
 (Hackett thought that in the interview with Polonius 
 when he brings a message from the Queen, Hamlet 
 should show irritation at the repetition of the message, 
 already received from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; 
 and after the " Very like a whale," of Polonius, Hamlet, 
 upon finding that Polonius will agree to everything he 
 suggests, reciprocates the courtesy and dismisses him 
 with: 
 
 " Then, I will come to my mother, by and by," 
 
 and, turning away from him, and walking toward the 
 other side of the stage, soliloquizes respecting his own 
 
I30 HAMLET. 
 
 vexation : " They fool me to the top of my bent," and 
 naturally supposing that Polonius, to whom he had 
 already given an answer, had gone with it in haste to 
 his mother, Hamlet is about to resume his invective 
 against the courier when he turns and perceives Polonius 
 standing just where he was when he had given him his 
 answer; and also still gaping at him in stupid amaze- 
 ment; whereupon Hamlet ought to approach Polonius 
 and repeat loudly and peevishly and syllabically distinct : 
 
 " I will eome BY and BY ! " 
 
 in order that Polonius, now no longer unable to com- 
 prehend Hamlet's desire for his departure, may with- 
 draw, as he does presently, saying: "I will say so!" 
 upon which Hamlet abruptly remarks : " By and by is 
 easily said ! " denoting : " If you understand my answer 
 which is so simple and easily carried, why don't you go 
 along about it.") 
 
 Forrest: These words to Polonius: " Do you see 
 yonder cloud ? " were addressed to him at the wing, 
 pointing off the side-scene or through a window. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : In two lines of the short 
 soliloquy which ends the scene, the tragedian indicated 
 by a master-piece of intonation and expression the span 
 and sweep of Hamlet's nature ; the restraining force of 
 will acting as counterpoise to the momentum of his 
 feelings : 
 
 ' ' Soft, now to my mother. 
 O heart, lose not thy nature, let not ever 
 The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom." 
 
 The thought of Nero's crime seemed suddenly to 
 occur to him, to fill him with horror, and to lend the 
 
HAMLET. 131 
 
 word Nero a surprising repulsion of gesture and 
 emphasis. 
 
 Wilson Barrett {Shakspeariana) : One of the most 
 effective bits of silent acting Mr. Barrett gives when, 
 after dismissing his watchers and sending back Polonius 
 who has brought him his mother's message to come to 
 her, left alone in the deserted garden, he looks cautiously 
 around him everywhere, whips out his sword, runs it 
 ahead of him in the shadows of the porch he must pass 
 through, looks back and around again, and then with 
 naked blade drawn, goes to meet his mother. 
 
 THE KING IN HIS CLOSET. 
 
 (Davies) : Some eminent actors, such as Keen, Quin 
 and Hulet, have not disdained to represent this charac- 
 ter. When Ryan, at Lincoln's-inn-fields Theatre, ap- 
 peared in Hamlet, to give strength to the play, Quin 
 and Walker acted the inferior parts of the King and 
 Horatio, and retained them from 1719 to 1734. 
 
 (The first actor who rejected the soliloquy of Hamlet's 
 deferring the punishment of the King, lest his soul go 
 to Heaven, was Mr. Garrick.) 
 
 Rossi : The actors and stage-managers — I have met 
 many such in England, America and Germany — who 
 omit this scene (the King in his closet), commit a van- 
 dalism, not only by " cutting " a momentous episode of 
 the tragedy, containing two essential monologues — that 
 of Hamlet, inspired by spiritual philosophy, and that 
 of Claudius, the outcome of philosophical materialism — 
 
132 HAMLET. 
 
 and explaining Hamlet's passivity toward his uncle, but 
 by consigning to oblivion a scene intimately connected 
 with the final catastrophe, when Hamlet slays the King 
 by steel and poison, and at an instant's notice, so as not 
 to give the sinner time for contrition, whereby he might 
 obtain divine forgiveness. 
 
 THE CLOSET-SCENE WITH THE QUEEN- 
 MOTHER. 
 Garrick (Davies) : Garrick here had an ample field 
 to display that fine expression of countenance, energy of 
 speech and warmth of passion, for which he was so 
 justly admired. To argumentative reproof he gave full 
 vigor; nor was he deficient in those filial regards which 
 a son should feel for a mother unhappily misled. His 
 address to the Ghost was reverentially awful, as well 
 as transcendently moving. His eye marked with grief 
 and filial love, pursued the melancholy Shade to its 
 exit. His recovery from that situation was characteris- 
 tically striking, and his filial exhortation to his mother 
 ardent and pathetic. Except in the delicacy of address 
 to a lady, in which Wilks and Barry excelled all mortals, 
 Garrick was in this scene a most proficient Hamlet. 
 
 WiLKS (Davies) : If Addison and Cibber justly 
 blamed Wilks for his behavior to the Ghost in the first 
 act, they could not possibly censure his conduct with his 
 mother in the third. His action was indeed a happy 
 mixture of warm indignation, tempered with the most 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 133 
 
 affecting tenderness. His whole deportment was princely 
 and graceful; when he presented the pictures, the re- 
 proaches his animation produced were guarded with 
 fihal reluctance ; and when he came to that pathetic 
 expostulation of 
 
 " Mother, for love of grace ! " 
 
 there was something in his manner inexpressibly gentle 
 and powerfully persuasive. 
 
 Kemble: "Is it the King?" was addressed by 
 Kemble to the million. It was doubted whether in 
 speaking daggers to the Queen, they were drawn and 
 sharp enough. Boaden thought greater keenness would 
 have been unfilial ; and as if he took delight in the task 
 which only stern necessity imposed upon him. 
 
 Kemble knelt in the adjuration to his mother. An 
 objection was taken that the passage is preceptive, rather 
 supplicating. Boaden thought not. As an affectionate 
 son, Hamlet is endeavoring to awake all the feelings of 
 the mother in her to combat the delusion of her guilty 
 attachment. The more endearing his urgency, the 
 more strictly natural. 
 
 Kemble : 
 
 "And when you are desirous to be blest 
 I'll blessing beg ai you." 
 
 Henderson : 
 
 " And when you are desirous to be blest 
 I'll blessing beg of you." 
 
 (Davies) : It has been the constant practice of the 
 
 stage ever since the Restoration, for Hamlet, in this scene, 
 
 to produce from his pocket, two pictures in little, of his 
 
 father and uncle, not much larger than two large coins 
 
134 HAMLET. 
 
 or medallions. How the graceful attitude of a man 
 could be given in a miniature, I can not conceive. 
 
 (Furness) : The original practice of the stage seems 
 to have been to have the two pictures hanging in the 
 Queen's closet. They are so represented in a print pre- 
 fixed to Rowe's Hamlet, published in 1709. After- 
 ward it became the fashion for Hamlet to take two 
 miniatures from his pocket; but as Hamlet would not 
 be likely to carry his uncle's picture in that way, a Bath 
 actor suggested snatching it from his- mother's neck. 
 Another arrangement was to have the new King's pic- 
 ture hanging on the wall, while Hamlet took his father's 
 from his bosom. Fitzgerald, in his Life of Garrick, sug- 
 gested that the pictures be seen with the mind's eye 
 only ; and this is followed by Irving and Salvini. Fech- 
 ter tears the King's miniature from the Queen's heck, 
 and throws it away. Edwin Booth makes use of two 
 miniatures, taking one from his own neck and the other 
 from the Queen's. 
 
 Edwin Booth (New York Sun, 1889): Upon 
 Booth's long since perfected Hamlet there is no new 
 praise to bestow, and there would hardly be a new com- 
 ment to make were it not for the great actor's variable 
 treatment of the chamber-interview with the Queen. 
 His reading remains unaltered, in so much as the small- 
 est pause or the slightest inflection ; but in the accom- 
 panying gestures and poses he seems to seek relief in 
 his work by frequent changes. Sometimes he refers to 
 " the counterfeit presentment of two brothers " as being 
 portraits on the walls, sometimes as medallions worn by 
 his mother and himself, and sometimes they are wholly 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 135 
 
 imaginary. This week he has the dead King's likeness 
 in a panel of the room, and the live King's on the 
 Queen's breast. All through the scene he alters the 
 motions in many ways, and particularly while gazing at 
 the apparition which his mother fails to see. 
 
 Henry Irving {\n Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1879): 
 It may be reasonably urged that there is a striking evi- 
 dence in the text itself that this portrayal of the two 
 brothers was a purely imaginative operation, for the 
 phrase, " Look you here — what follows " — (this expres- 
 sion is most significant), surely rather indicates a chain 
 of argument which Hamlet is about to set forth, and to 
 enforce by the most vivid illustrations which his perfer- 
 vid mind could furnish, than that he is going to point 
 out what is already before his mother's eyes. The prac- 
 tical difficulties in the way of a literal conformity with 
 the text offer a complete justification for an actor's de- 
 parture from it. It is not a question of violating the 
 poet's ideal, but of choosing from among.st certain effects 
 those which will create the most vivid impression. If 
 the pictures are to be in full view of the audience they 
 must be placed on the further wall of the chamber, and 
 the actor in describing them must face them and so turn 
 his back upon the spectators, whose attention will thus 
 be distracted from Hamlet's words. If they be placed 
 at the side or on opposite sides, they can be but partially 
 seen, and then not by the entire house. It should never 
 be forgotten that the stage has four walls, though the 
 fourth is only theoretical, and I believe it to be in every 
 sense advantageous that the audience should be left to 
 imagine, if they like, either that the pictures are on this 
 
136 HAMLET. 
 
 fourth wall, or that Hamlet is painting them from his 
 imagination. Whichever view be adopted, the result, 
 then, is that the mind is concentrated upon the impres- 
 sive image of the poet, instead of being diverted from it 
 by some mechanical device. The notoriously hazardous 
 character of stage-portraits especially in these realistic 
 days, disposes me to contend that my method satisfies 
 the acquirements of the situation. Signor Salvini, one 
 of the most accomplished of actors, on seeing my 
 method, paid me the compliment of adopting it in pref- 
 erence to that which he had originally practised. I 
 venture to think that this is one of those points of detail 
 on which Shakspeare himself would have allowed a 
 large discretion to the actor. No one had less scruple 
 than he in departing from strict realism when it ceased 
 to be effectual, and I think he would be surprised, were 
 he to return to earth, by the reverence for his supposed 
 intentions displayed by the distinguished dilettante man- 
 ager — stage-manager — who in a comparatively recent 
 revival of " Hamlet," gravely introduced into " another 
 part of the platform " what seemed to be a counterfeit 
 presentment of a crane — presumably to indicate the 
 commercial genius of the Danes. 
 
 Rossi : With respect to the comparison between the 
 two portraits, I ventured, after mature reflection, upon 
 the innovation of substituting, for the pictures tradition- 
 ally affixed to the walls of Gertrude's bedroom, medal- 
 lions, that of the late King suspended to Hamlet's neck, 
 and that of Claudius hanging upon the Queen's bosom. 
 My reasons for doing so were : First, the absolute non- 
 existence of scenic decorations in Shakspeare's time ren- 
 
HAMLET. 137 
 
 dering it highly probable that the pictures were worn by 
 the mother and son respectively; second, because it 
 seemed to me absolutely natural that the bereaved son 
 should wear his dead father's likeness near his heart, and 
 that the faithless widow should wear about her the portrait 
 of her second husband ; third, because it was out of the 
 question that Claudius, the fratricide, should have en- 
 dured the continual presence of his murdered brother's 
 image in his wife's bedroom ; and last, because of the 
 excellent effect produced by Hamlet when he tramples 
 on the locket containing his uncle's counterfeit presentr 
 ment. The comparison between the dead hero and the 
 living assassin, as effected by means of these two por- 
 traits, is a deeply emotional " effect," as well as a poeti- 
 cal episode of exquisite pathos. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : The strong current, the 
 earnest pleading, the impassioned conscience, the noble 
 purpose, the intense personal life, made manifest in this 
 scene, might serve as a study for those who, impressed 
 by a single trait in this " abstract and brief chronicle " 
 of civilized man — this Hamlet — weakly conclude him to 
 be full of weakness, and of a melancholy born of 
 weakness. 
 
 " Mother, you have — my father — much offended." 
 " Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall not budge ; 
 You go not, till I set you up a glass 
 Where you may see the 2K-most part of you." 
 
 He had already said : 
 
 "I will speak — daggers to her." 
 That word "inmost^' touched the core of the matter. 
 The sound of it, greatly prolonged on the first syllable, 
 was like a searching probe of steel. After he had killed 
 Polonius, he gave separately each word of the line : 
 
138 HAMLET. 
 
 " Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell ! " 
 
 and all with ascending emphasis, in tones of mingled 
 
 grief and anger, and as if dashed with tears. 
 
 Looking on the picture of his father he says : 
 
 " Where every god did seem to set his seal. 
 This — was — your husband 
 
 I kissing the picture and in voice that sheathed affection 
 
 for his father, in reprobation for his mother] : 
 
 "Look you now, what follows." 
 
 [with Startling change of manner] : 
 
 " Here is-s-s your husband, like a mildewed ear. 
 Blasting his wholesome brother." 
 
 The words of this phrase were shaken and eddied over 
 by one continuing flood of tone ; in obedience to a pas- 
 sionate method most expressive and peculiar to this 
 actor. 
 
 At the opportune moment, when the heat of his in- 
 dignation finds expression thus : 
 
 " A murderer and a villain, 
 A cut-purse of the empire and the rule," 
 
 the Ghost appears. There seemed to pass over Booth's 
 features an instant baptism of devotion. All anger van- 
 ished. The outreaching and imploring look in his full 
 blue eyes, arching the inner angles of the brows, gave 
 the face a terrible exaltation, as he began that strange 
 colloquy between Hamlet, his guilty mother, and his 
 father's Spirit, with the words : 
 
 " What would your gracious figure? " 
 
 During the presence of the Ghost, until just before its 
 exit at the opposite door, Booth stood rooted to the spot 
 from which he first saw it ; stood with steady gaze, out- 
 stretched hands, and such pathetic reverence of voice 
 and action, that though we looked and listened then in 
 
HAMLET. 139 
 
 a mood above weeping, yet the memory of it surprises 
 
 us as we write, " unto the brink of tears." 
 
 Ghost : Speak to her, Hamlet. 
 
 Hamlet : (Still looking at the Ghost) How is it 
 
 with you, lady ? 
 Queen : Whereon do you look? 
 Hamlet: 0« him; 0« him 
 
 {as if the question were idle ; as if she must seethe figure 
 also). 
 
 In the oft-quoted passage — 
 
 "Assume a virtue, if you have it not." 
 Booth paused after the word " virtue," then uttered the 
 words, " if you have it not," as if a spring of love 
 gushed in his heart, and he caught at a hope that she 
 might have repented already. 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : The closet-scene with the Queen- 
 mother, as Forrest played it, was a model of justness. 
 He began in a respectful and sorrowing tone. Gradu- 
 ally as he dwelt on her faithlessness to his father, and 
 her loathsome sensuality, his glowing memory and burn- 
 ing words wrought him up to vehement indignation, 
 and he appeared on the point of offering violence, when 
 the Ghost reappeared with warning signal and message. 
 The suddenness of change in his manner — pallor of face, 
 shrunken shoulders, fixed dilation of eyes — was elec- 
 trifying; and when in response to the Queen's 
 
 "O, Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain," 
 
 he said, 
 
 O, throw away the worser part of it, 
 And live the purer with the other half. 
 Good-night; but go not to my uncle's bed; 
 Assume a virtue, if you have it not," 
 
 he compressed into his utterance, in one indescrib- 
 able mixture, a world of entreaty, command disgust, 
 grief, deference, love and mournfulness. 
 
I40 HAMLET. 
 
 Edwin Booth (George William Curtis): In the 
 chamber-scene with his mother, when the Ghost passes 
 and Hamlet falls for a moment prostrate with emotion 
 at his disappearance, the Queen insinuates that he is 
 mad. There is a kind of calm, pitying disdain mingled 
 with the sense that her feeling is natural, with which 
 Hamlet steps toward her, his finger on his pulse. The 
 tragedy in Hamlet is not only the vital curiosity about 
 existence, the mastering love of life which almost sub- 
 dues his soul with fear and doubt, and keeps it tense 
 with eager questioning, but it is a conviction of a mind 
 morbid with this continual strain that it is a most sacred 
 duty to end another life, to plunge a guilty soul into the 
 abyss of doubt, and that soul the one dearest to his 
 mother. This explains the fascination which the idea 
 of his uncle's death always exercises upon his mind, 
 and also his inability to do more than dream and doubt 
 over the action. It is this complication which produces 
 one of Booth's finest scenes. In the interview with his 
 mother he stabs Polonius through the arras. For an 
 instant the possibility of what he has done sweeps over 
 his mind. Always the victim of complex emotions, the 
 instinctive satisfaction of knowing the act done is 
 mingled with the old familiar horror of the doom to 
 which he may have consigned his uncle. With sword 
 uplifted, and a vague terror both of hope and fear in 
 his face and tone, Hamlet does not slide rapidly back 
 and hurridly exclaim, " Is it the King?" but tottering 
 with emotion he asks slowly in an appalling staccato, 
 "Is it the King?" 
 
 Rossi (William Winter) : In the closet-scene the 
 
HAMLET. 141 
 
 killing of Polonius was done very badly ; but, by dint 
 of much bluster toward the Queen, and then of throw- 
 ing away his sword, to show that no actual violence was 
 intended, Signor Rossi contrived to make very good 
 Bowery melodrama of this awful and beautiful passage, 
 crowning his work by tearing off the Queen's miniature 
 of her husband, and grinding it beneath his heel, in a 
 pose of capital stage-fury. 
 
 (Laurence Hutton) : In his first interview with the 
 Ghost he betrays no fear, because he sees in it only the 
 image of a lamented and beloved father, while in the scene 
 with the Queen, when the Ghost appears, he crouches 
 behind his mother's chair in abject terror, because, as 
 he explains it, the phantom then is an embodiment of 
 conscience, the ghost of a father whose mandate he has 
 disobeyed. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, 1865) : Into 
 the Queen's closet, where a single light burns in the 
 sumptuous gloom, and a crucifix gleams against the wall, 
 comes Hamlet. There is no anger in him as he first 
 accosts his mother. There is the awful obligation to tell 
 her truths which are a horror to him and a shame to her. 
 It is the terrible, intense quiet of his tone and manner 
 which frightens her more than violence would have 
 done. At the shout of old Polonius he leaps like light- 
 ning to the arras. The wild hope of the cry : " Is it the 
 King?" as he stands with the lamp he has snatched up 
 flickering above his head and his hand on the parted 
 arras, makes the air shudder. Looking down upon the 
 old man he utters : " Thou wretched, rash, intruding 
 
142 HAMLET. 
 
 fool, farewell," with accumulating emphasis of bitterness, 
 not more repenting the blow bestowed than deploring 
 the failure of the blow intended. His reproaches to the 
 Queen are terrible; but never brutal, and never loud. 
 He himself trembles and shudders with the pain he 
 gives, but never relents. He is pleading with her for 
 her soul. Suddenly upon his sacred anger comes the 
 Ghost in whose name he has spoken. For an instant of 
 time terror touches him. Then a passion of tenderness 
 sweeps over him. He reaches out his hands to the 
 shadowy figure. His tones vibrate with love. When 
 the Ghost says : " Speak to her, Hamlet," in the same 
 state of double consciousness which marked his first in- 
 terview with the Spirit, he puts his arm around the trem- 
 bling woman of whose presence he has ceased to be 
 aware. He is appalled to find that his mother sees 
 nothing where stands this figure so real to him. He 
 follows it with his eyes, and when it glides away he fol- 
 lows it as one who has no life apart from it — as it fades, 
 falling like a dead thing across the threshold. Called 
 back by his mother's voice to this hard life, a new pity 
 for her softens his voice and manner. He dismisses her 
 with gentleness. He would bear the burden of her sin 
 if he could. 
 
 Charles Kean (Hackett) : One of his most admired 
 and applauded points was produced after Hamlet had 
 thrust violently through the arras in second stage en- 
 trance, left, slid ten or twelve feet upon the floor cloth 
 down to the right centre of the stage, and then and there 
 utter the words : "Is it the King?" with his loudest possible 
 shout of exultation, utterly at variance with the pretext. 
 
HAMLET. - 143 
 
 Bandmann (London AthencBum, 1873): His address- 
 ing to the picture of Claudius the strong words em- 
 ployed by Hamlet in his interview with the Queen, has 
 some ground of reason, but his sudden recoil and fall 
 when the Ghost appears, and his delivery in a recum- 
 bent attitude of the address to his mother, are equally 
 meaningless and ineffective. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : Having killed Polonius, 
 Fechter elaborated Shakspeare's few words by the agony 
 of his experience at having made so fatal a mistake, by 
 throwing away his sword that it might not be repeated. 
 
 The excitement produced by the Ghost's appearance 
 yielded to regret at his departure ; and there was ten- 
 derness toward the guilty mother who finally knelt 
 before him, being raised up gently at the words, " Con- 
 fess yourself to Heaven." When Hamlet bade her good- 
 night, she attempted to bless him, but was firmly, not 
 unkindly repelled. This action was followed by the 
 
 lines, 
 
 " And when you are desirous to be blessed 
 I'll blessing beg of you.''' 
 
 Before the sobbing Queen retires, she once more turns 
 to her son, exclaiming, " Hamlet ! " (this was Fechter's 
 introduction) and stretched out her hands for a filial 
 embrace. Hamlet held up his father's picture, and the 
 wretched woman staggered from the stage. Kissing the 
 picture, Hamlet murmured — 
 
 " I must be cruel only to be kind," 
 
 then taking light in hand, and raising the arras, gazed at 
 Polonius exclaiming, 
 
 "Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind." 
 
144 HAMLET. 
 
 (Mr. Hackett finds fault with all actors of Hamlet 
 whom he had seen, in the application of the lines, 
 
 " I must be cruel only to be kind, 
 Thus bad begins and worse remains behind." 
 
 as follows : After the dialogue between Hamlet and his 
 mother, as it is abridged and arranged for representa- 
 tion, when Hamlet utters the words : 
 
 " So again, good night." 
 
 the Queen is required to approach Hamlet and to offer 
 a parting embrace, at which Hamlet seems shocked, and 
 shudders, and shrinks back with averted palms, and, 
 pharisee-like, refuses to allow her; the Queen then 
 seems convulsed, bursts into tears, and rushes off one 
 way while Hamlet goes in the opposite direction, ex- 
 pressing first as an excuse for such unrelenting hard- 
 heartedness the couplet quoted; whereas if we examine 
 the original scene, and the order of Shakspeare's lan- 
 guage, we find that this same couplet does not come in 
 next after the last time of Hamlet's saying " Good night, 
 mother," but in the midst of his advice, reflections, and 
 varied expostulations with his mother, and when the 
 Ghost, conjured to his imaginative vision by the heat of 
 his distemper, in the very witching time of night, had 
 been dispelled by the sprinkling of cool patience, and 
 his reasoning faculties had again resumed their sway. 
 In the third line of the speech wherein the couplet oc- 
 curs — after which he utters fifty more lines before he 
 separates from his mother — he has interjected " good 
 night," as if for the purpose of hurrying her away, and 
 with the object of securing a chance to secrete the body 
 of Polonius ; then adding some lines about virtue, etc., 
 says : "Again, good night,-' and, as an inducement for a 
 
HAMLET. 145 
 
 mother to become virtuous, and be in a condition to bless 
 her son with a good grace, remarks in substance : When 
 you by a reformation evince an anxiety to deserve a 
 blessing of Heaven, I will beg a blessing of you. Mr. 
 Hackett holdsr that there is no warrant for the Queen's 
 offer to embrace Hamlet ; certainly none for Hamlet's 
 assuming to be so much holier than she was. 
 
 (Davies) : The part of Hamlet's mother is a charac- 
 ter of dignity not without a mixture of passion. 
 Though of late our principal actresses have rejected 
 Queen Gertrude, yet the skill of a good performer is 
 requisite to fill up many of the theatrical situations with 
 propriety. Without a proper support from the Queen, 
 Hamlet's action in the last scene of the third act would 
 lose half its force. Lady Slingsby, an actress of merit, 
 was the first Hamlet's mother, I think, since the Restor- 
 ation, when Mrs. Betterton acted Ophelia. Mrs. Porter 
 was the Queen-mother of Wilks and Mrs. Hallam of 
 Ryan. The universal applause Mrs. Pritchard com- 
 manded in this great interview with her son was thought 
 by her a sufficient recompense for going through various 
 attitudes of less consequence. Her attention to all the 
 less and seemingly unimportant business of the Queen 
 was so exact that Hamlet's mother was esteemed one 
 of her prime characters. Mrs. Porter, though a greater 
 actress in tragedy, did not excel her in Gertrude. 
 
 LUDWIG BarNAY (E. a. Dithmar) : The closet-scene 
 lacks the solemnity and dignity that belong to it. At 
 its close Hamlet takes his erring mother in his arms and 
 then lets her fall backward upon a pile of cushions while 
 he proceeds to business with the body of Polonius lying 
 
146 HAMLET. 
 
 in sight of the spectators. The Polonius of the night 
 was Possart, whose choice of that character seems to be 
 a mere freak. He made the chamberlain a sincere, 
 pathetic, old man in the scene with Laertes and Ophelia, 
 and was mildly amusing thereafter, except when he 
 came out of his closet and died all over the floor. Then 
 he was excessively disagreeable. Possart might better 
 have tried the King, a part that all actors of established 
 position seem to avoid. 
 
 Louis James (E. A. Dithmar) : His Hamlet, like 
 Lawrence Barrett's, ends the closet-scene by blubbering 
 in his mother's arms, an act entirely inconsistent with 
 Hamlet's character, and wholly at variance with the text. 
 
 Kemble (Serjeant John Adams) : If I remember 
 right, John Kemble's hand was always on his mother's 
 arm — his eyes fixed on him — his own on the Ghost; 
 and when the Ghost desired him to address her, he did 
 so mechanically, without looking at her or moving a 
 muscle. 
 
 Garrick (Davies) : At the appearance of the Ghost, 
 Hamlet immediately rises from his seat affrighted ; at 
 the same time he contrives to kick down his chair, which 
 by making a sudden noise, it was imagined would con- 
 tribute to the perturbation and terror of the incident. 
 A poor stage-trick and should be avoided. 
 
 (Cole) : Garrick, though a professed reformer, in- 
 dulged freely in stage-trickery. It is recorded that in 
 the closet-scene he had a mechanical contrivance 
 by which his chair fell, as of itself, when he started upon 
 the sudden entrance of the Ghost. Henderson, his im- 
 
HAMLET. 147 
 
 mediate successor in the part, rejected this practice, and 
 the doing so was called a daring innovation. 
 
 Henry Irving (London Theatre) : The closet-scene 
 was enacted in a room adjoining the Queen's bed- 
 chamber, and the Ghost passes through the door of the 
 latter, as if to enforce the behest: 
 
 " Let not the royal bed of Denmark," etc. 
 Hence the Ghost appeared in a sort of robe, following 
 the direction of the first quarto, " Enter the ghost in his 
 night-gown," and in "accordance with Hamlet's excla- 
 mation : 
 
 " My father in his habit as he lived." 
 
 Wilson Barrett {Shakspeariand) : In the scene in 
 the Queen's chamber, Mr. Barrett takes his highest posi- 
 tion. Determined " to speak daggers, but use none," 
 his steady purpose " to be cruel only to be kind," com- 
 mends itself at last, by its convincing earnestness, to the 
 unhappy Queen, who sees her fault and even seems 
 moved to unburden her degree of guilt, when Hamlet's 
 delicate spirit waiving so unfilial an office, says : 
 
 " C(7K/5rw yourself to Heaven," 
 and dares make her a trusted partner of his intentions 
 in continuing : 
 
 " Repent what's /aj^, avoid what is to COME," 
 
 at this word laying his hand significantly upon his sword. 
 Again he tells her that when she is desirous to be blest, 
 he'll " blessing beg of her!' Then turning to the body 
 of the spying Polonius he has thrust through, mistaking 
 him for better prey, he says : 
 
 " For this same lord, 
 I do repent ! but Heaven hath pleased it so. 
 
148 HAMLET. 
 
 To punish ME with this, and this with me. 
 That I must be their scourge and minister." 
 
 He continues lamenting: 
 
 " And I will answer well. 
 The death I gave him," 
 
 implying thus, that through OpheHa will he be thus 
 afflicted, and through the trouble to which this is the 
 prologue. After this almost reconciliation, the o'er- 
 strained heart of Hamlet, as he stands to say, " Good 
 night," o'er the slain body, breaks into uncontrollable 
 sobs. 
 
 The King entering, finds in Polonius's death new cause 
 of alarm, and when recalling the young prince, he returns 
 cool and defiant, who had gone out a moment before 
 broken and weeping, the anti-climax reached is excel- 
 lent. Seeming to see that not yet may he attack the 
 person of his hated uncle, his eye lights upon the picture 
 of the King, which he has used before in his interview 
 with his mother, and which he has thrown upon the 
 floor, and he darts at it, and stamps upon it. 
 
 When the King asks: "Where is Polonius?" Hamlet 
 tells him lightly: "In Heaven, send thither and see." 
 Then adds deliberately and with the fiercest boldness : 
 " If your messenger find him not there, seek him in the 
 other place YOURSELF." Claudius rushes toward him at 
 this, then Hamlet suddenly turns before his eyes the 
 picture he wears, on the chain around his neck, of the 
 murdered King, and his guilty successor sinks back at 
 the sight of it like a cowed beast. 
 
 (Wilson Barrett) : Since Betterton's time the actors 
 have invariably finished the third act of Hamlet with 
 the lines, 
 
HAMLET. 149 
 
 " I must be cruel, only to be kind; 
 Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.'' 
 
 What is the result of this arrangement? The fourth 
 act commences with the meeting of the King and Queen. 
 The King learns from her that Hamlet has just slain 
 Polonius; he confides the secret to Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern ; they are sent to find the body of Polo- 
 nius, and, before that task is accomplished, Ophelia 
 enters, mad with grief for her father's death, of which 
 she has never heard, and describes in her madness his 
 funeral which has never taken place. Furthermore, 
 Laertes enters and demaods of the King, " Oh, thou 
 vile King, give me my father," and goes on to talk of 
 his "means of death — his obscure funeral." Obscure 
 indeed, considering the fact that the body has not been 
 found. Remember, too, that Laertes was in France 
 when his father was murdered ; that the news had to 
 travel from Denmark to France ; that Laertes had to 
 journey from France to Denmark and stir up the rebel- 
 lion which he guides and leads — and all this has been 
 done in the few hours or rather minutes which elapse 
 between the slaying of Polonius and the despatch of 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find the body. Ham- 
 let has been sent a moment before to England ; ere he 
 has had time to cross the courtyard of the castle, a letter 
 is brought to the King from him, in which he says he 
 has been " three days at sea ; " has been captured by 
 the pirates, and has been by them set naked on the 
 shores of Denmark. What a jumble is here. And yet 
 for generations this maltreatment of this glorious 
 tragedy has been allowed to pass unquestioned. By 
 finishing the act where Shakspeare meant it to be 
 
ISO HAMLET. 
 
 finished — viz., after Hamlet's departure for England — 
 we get the interregnum which the dramatist intended. 
 Some six weeks have elapsed, there has been time to 
 bury Polonius, time for Ophelia's grief to affect her 
 brain ; time for Laertes to travel from France, and time 
 for Hamlet to be captured by the pirates at sea and be 
 released again. 
 
 ACT IV.— OPHELIA'S MADNESS. 
 Bernhardt (Knight): Her performances in the 
 fourth act, are, indeed in their way, matchless. In place 
 of the outbursts of song to which Ophelia ordinarily 
 gives way, Mme. Bernhardt delivers in a plaintive chant, 
 a ballad concerning herself and her Valentine, which 
 introduces some of the verses quoted by Shakspeare. 
 Her mournful intonation and her startled gaze when 
 Horatio crosses her path, though they do not reconcile 
 one to the change that has been made, extort admira- 
 tion. A full tribute of tears is accorded her in the 
 scene with the wild flowers, which, instead of being 
 braided in a coronal, descend in a falling spray with her 
 hair. The action with which she accompanies the 
 bestowal of each is, like the words she utters, charged 
 with more significance than the original text warrants. 
 A direct prophecy of evil to the King is thus delivered. 
 Very striking, however, is the manner in which, after giving 
 the Queen a bunch of rue, she, instead of taking from 
 her gathered skirt a fresh spray to weave with the other 
 flowers and herbs in her hair, snatches back a spray of 
 that the Queen has taken. After her final departure 
 
HAMLET. 151 
 
 she is once more seen with her face rigid as marble and 
 her body covered with flowers, carried on a bier to the 
 churchyard. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons (Campbell) : For her second benefit 
 (May 15, 1786) this season, Mrs. Siddons played Ophe- 
 lia. Having never seen her in the character, I must 
 own that I cannot speak of her performance of it with- 
 out some doubt. On the one hand, Mr. Boaden says 
 that she made it deeply affecting; and the criticism of 
 the press generally concurs in extolling her performance 
 of it. It is also a striking circumstance, that her fellow- 
 actress, who played the Queen, was so electrified by the 
 Siddons's looks, when she seized her arm, that she hesi- 
 tated, and forgot her part. On the other hand, though 
 Mrs. Siddons was a passable vocalist, yet I can hardly 
 imagine her powers of singing adapted for the wild ten- 
 derness of Ophelia; and, if she succeeded so absolutely 
 in the part, why did she never perform it a second time? 
 
 Mrs. Mountford (1669-1701, Genest)*: During 
 her last years became deranged, but as her disorder was 
 not outrageous, she was not placed under any rigorous 
 confinement, but was suff'ered to walk about her house. 
 One day in a lucid interval, she asked what play was to 
 be performed that evening, and was told it was to be 
 Hamlet. While she was on the stage, she had acted 
 Ophelia with great applause ; the recollection struck her, 
 and, with all that cunning that is so frequently allied to 
 insanity, she found means to elude the care of her at- 
 tendants, and get to the theatre, where, concealing her- 
 self till the scene where Opheha was to make her ap- 
 
152 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 pearance in her mad state, she pushed upon the stage 
 before the person appointed to play the character, and 
 exhibited a representation of it that astonished the per- 
 formers as well as the audience. She exhausted her 
 vital powers in this effort, was taken home, and died 
 shortly after. 
 
 Fechter's treatment of the King in the fourth act 
 was that of undisguised contempt. " If your messenger 
 find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself," 
 and it was seen that if Hamlet were not guarded he 
 would then and there have sent the King to the other 
 place in search of his courtier. 
 
 ACT v.— THE CHURCHYARD SCENE. 
 (Davies) : Augustin Sly, Tarleton, Kempe, or some 
 old actor of the comic cast, was the original Grave-dig- 
 ger. Cabe Underbill, a comedian whom Sir William 
 Davenant-pronounced to be one of the truest players 
 for humor he ever saw, acted this part forty years suc- 
 cessively. He acted till he was past eighty. He was 
 so excellent in the part of Trinculo in the Tempest, that 
 he was called Prince Trinculo. He retired in 1703. B. 
 Johnson for above forty years gave a true picture of an 
 archclown in the Grave-digger. His jokes and repar- 
 tees had a strong effect from his seeming insensibility of 
 their force. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : 
 
 Hamlet (fo Horatio)—" This is Laertes, 
 A very noble youth, mark," 
 
i 
 
 HAASE. 
 
HAMLET. ' 153 
 
 uttered with perfect simplicity and generous high breed- 
 ing. The princeliness came out more strongly in Mr. 
 Booth's delineations of these latter scenes. When Laer- 
 tes says : 
 
 " A ministering angel shall my sister be," 
 
 Hamlet, according to the text, utters the exclamation; 
 "What, the fair Ophelia 1 " 
 
 No syllable of this phrase could be heard ; only a wild, 
 inarticulate cry escaped him, and he muffled his face in 
 his cloak. He seemed to have gone behind Shakspeare's 
 language to Shakspeare's thought. 
 
 " What is he, whose grief 
 
 Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of sorrow 
 Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand 
 Like wonder-wounded hearers ? This is I, 
 Hamlet, the Dane." 
 
 So Shakspeare ; but Booth made a full stop after 
 " stand." He then said : 
 
 "Look, wonder- wounded hearers, this is I, etc." 
 
 The scene, however, was grandly carried to completion. 
 The storm of mingled grief and love for the dead Ophe- 
 lia, of anger breaking through respect for Laertes, could 
 never have had a more characteristic representation. 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : Entering slowly with Horatio, he 
 seemed, as he looked about, invested with religious rev- 
 erence. Then he sat down on a tombstone, and entered 
 easily into conversation in a humorous vein with the 
 clown who was digging a grave. At the same time he 
 kept up an even flow of understanding with Horatio. 
 He so bore himself that the audience could reach no 
 foregone conclusion to withdraw their absorbed attention 
 from the strange funeral phantasmagora on which the 
 
IS4 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 curtain was soon to sink? like a pall. Over the skull of 
 Yorick, in quick transition from the bantering with the 
 clown, his reminiscences, not far from mirth, his pro- 
 found yet simple moralizing, so heartfelt and natural, 
 were naive, and solemn, and pathetic to the verge of 
 smiles, and awe, and tears. When he learned that 
 Ophelia was dead, and that the grave was for her, he 
 staggered, and bent his head for a moment on the 
 shoulder of his friend Horatio. Though so quickly- 
 done, it told the whole story of his love for her and his 
 enforced renunciation. 
 
 Edwin Booth (William Winter) : Booth directs that 
 one of the skulls thrown up by the grave-digger shall 
 have a tattered and mouldy fool's cap adhering to it, so 
 that it may attract attention, and be singled out from 
 the others as Yorick's skull. 
 
 (Mr. Hackett was of the opinion that this line should 
 be accented : 
 
 "That SKULL — ^had a tongue in it and could sing once," 
 
 being a reflection upon the singing of the grave-digger.) 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : In Fechter's own theatre the 
 churchyard scene was that of a brilliant sunset. His 
 apostrophe to Yorick was singularly tender, carrying the 
 skull almost to his lips, when he put it away with a 
 shiver. Ophelia was brought through the churchyard 
 gateway (not from the church), and the officiating priest 
 wore none of the insignia of his office. 
 " What ! the fair Ophelia ! " 
 
 and overwhelmed with agony Hamlet fell on his knees 
 beside a tomb, and buried his face in his hands. 
 
HAMLET. 155 
 
 Irving (London Theatre) : Ophelia is buried at night- 
 fall, first, because that used to be the custom in the case 
 of suicide ; and, secondly, because of Hamlet's allusion 
 to the " wandering stars." 
 
 The churchyard is on a hill near the palace, and as 
 night comes on the funeral procession wends slowly up 
 the ascent. Never before had the " maimed rites " been 
 so exactly and impressively performed. 
 
 In playing Hamlet, Mr. Irving, as everybody knows, 
 does not leap into the grave. True, Hamlet asks 
 Laertes : 
 
 " Dost thou come here to whine? 
 To outface me with leaping in her grave ? 
 Be buried quick with her, and so will I;" 
 
 but he at once shows that it is all talk, by adding, four 
 lines later : 
 
 " Nay, an' thou'lt mouth, 
 I'll rant, as well as thou." 
 
 Kemble (Boaden) : At the grave, in the quarrel with 
 Laertes, Kemble was at first thought rather too quiet; 
 but he worked up by degrees to a " towering passion," 
 and finaHy converted the Ossa into a mere wart by 
 throwing his millions of acres against the burning zone. 
 Of rants, mere intended rants, this is one of the best 
 going, and an especial favorite with the gods of the 
 theatre. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field) : In the controversy between 
 Hamlet and Laertes, Macready and Kemble leaped into 
 the grave and grappled, but Fechter abstained from that 
 absurdity, not approaching the grave until his last word 
 was spoken, when gazing at the gaping void, and at Ophe- 
 lia's corpse, he was dragged off the stage by Horatio. 
 
156 HAMLET. 
 
 Charles Kean (Michael Nugent, 1838): He carries 
 the weeping sentimentaUty of Hamlet into situations 
 where he is a mere abstract speculator. The beautiful 
 lines commencing: "Imperial Caesar," do not want tears 
 to enforce their moral — the nothingness of defunct 
 mortality. 
 
 Edwin Booth (Miss Calhoun, 1865) : The whole 
 stage is open for the graveyard scene. From the 
 shadow of the gloomy trees in the distance, Hamlet and 
 Horatio come slowly forward ; Hamlet sits down to rest 
 on a low knoll, and talks with the clown. From the 
 lighted chapel wails a funeral dirge; the sad proces- 
 sion enters ; the two friends withdraw and stand uncov- 
 ered in the shadow of a tall monument. When Laertes 
 says, 
 
 "A ministering angel shall my sister be," 
 
 Hamlet starts back, muffles his face in his mantle, and 
 falls on Horatio's neck with a despairing cry, in which 
 all words are lost. In the scene that follows, there is 
 the agony of a wounded soul, but no artificial frenzy ; 
 there is the wrestle with Laertes but no pot-house 
 wrangling ; there is the sad appeal to the old affection 
 and the memory which should make them friends, but 
 it is the appeal of a proud and a clear soul, not of a 
 weak or sullied one. 
 
 (Mrs. Asia Booth Clarke) : Booth introduced sitting 
 on the tomb in the graveyard when, with his face half- 
 buried on Horatio's shoulder, he speaks as if to his own 
 heart, the words "What! the fair Ophelia?" His resting 
 previously on the tomb is most natural and graceful. 
 
HAMLET. 157 
 
 SCENE WITH OSRIC. 
 Irving (London Theatre) : The scene between Ham- 
 let and Osric was outside the castle, instead of in a 
 hall, and the line: 
 
 " Put your bonnet to its right use ; 'tis for the head," 
 
 was not out of place. In saying: " I will walk here in 
 the hall," Hamlet may. have indicated the castle by 
 gesture. 
 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : Hamlet consents to 
 play the wager with Laertes, but is possessed with a 
 presentiment of evil. Mr. Booth sometimes gave the 
 passage thus : 
 
 " It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of gaingiving as would, perhaps 
 [slight pause, then in lower tone ], trouble a woman : ' ' 
 
 meaning : " It ought not to trouble me, a man, yet I feel 
 it does." On other occasions he said : 
 
 "As would, perhaps, trouble [slight pause] a woman;" 
 
 meaning : " But shall not trouble me." 
 
 THE LAST SCENE. 
 The Elder Booth (Gould) : The last scene was full 
 of grace and dramatic truth, in the fencing-match with 
 Laertes, and in its accumulation of tragical results. 
 After Hamlet has wrested the poisoned cup from Hora- 
 tio's hand, he says : 
 
 " If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain. 
 To tell my story." 
 
 Striving against the poison at work in his own frame, he 
 
158 HAMLET. 
 
 begs Horatio to live, and lifts his hand toward that 
 heaven whither he felt his noble friend would go, saying : 
 
 "Absent thee from felicity awhile.'' 
 
 Forrest (Alger) : He died with philosophic resigna- 
 tion and undemonstrative quietude. While all the mutes 
 and audience to the act looked pale and trembled at the 
 tragic chance, he bequeathed the justification of his 
 memory to his dear Horatio, gave his dying voice for 
 the election of Fortinbras, and slowly, as the potent 
 poison quite o'ercrowed his spirit, let his head sink on 
 the bosom of his one friend, and with a long breath 
 faintly whispers : 
 
 "The rest is silence." 
 
 Salvini (Lewes) : The close was magnificent. No 
 more pathetic death has been seen on the stage. 
 Among its many fine touches there was the subtle 
 invention of making the dying Hamlet draw down the 
 head of Horatio to kiss him into silence ; which 
 reminds me of the " Kiss me, Hardy," of the dying 
 Nelson. And this affecting motive was represented by 
 an action as novel as it was truthful — ■ namely, the 
 uncertain hand blindly searching for the dear head, and 
 then faintly closing on it with a sort of final adieu. 
 
 Irving (London Theatre) : The last scene is laid 
 in a hall, and through some arches at the back may be 
 seen a lawn, and the orchard in which the late King met 
 his death. The change is open to the objection that it 
 renders Hamlet's "Let the dooYs be locked" almost 
 unintelligible; yet it may be supposed that the door 
 was the only exit available, and the idea of having the 
 
HAMLET. 159 
 
 murderer's punishment meted out to him in sight of 
 the scene of his crime has the element of poetic justice. 
 
 Fechter (Kate Field): Fechter's arrangement of 
 the stage for the final scene : In the background ran a 
 gallery to which a short flight of stairs led on each side 
 of the stage, and by which all exits and entrances were 
 made. To the left sat the King on the throne. The 
 moment Hamlet exclaimed 
 
 " Ho ! Let the door be locked, 
 Treachery! Seek it out," 
 
 the King exhibited signs of fear; and while Laertes 
 made his terrible confession, the regicide stole to the 
 opposite stairs shielding himself from Hamlet's observa- 
 tion, behind a group of courtiers. Laertes no sooner 
 uttered the words, 
 
 " The King's to blame," 
 
 than Hamlet turned suddenly to the throne in search of 
 his victim. Discovering the ruse, he rushed up the left- 
 hand stairs, met the King in the centre of the gallery 
 and stabbed him. As Hamlet descended the stairs the 
 poison took effect, and murmuring 
 
 "The rest is silence," 
 fell dead on the corpse of Laertes. There was no 
 contortion. 
 
 J. H. Fitzpatrick : Fechter entirely omitted the 
 attempt of Horatio to poison himself, declaring the 
 incident only an interruption. 
 
 Wilson Barrett: Mr. Barrett does not incline 
 much to the pathetic side of the conception of Horatio. 
 He is far more concerned with his father's picture than 
 with his friend, whom he looks upon more as a valet, 
 
i6o HAMLET. 
 
 and even employs him when death is glazing his eye to 
 pull his father's miniature out of his pocket in order that 
 he may gaze upon it. 
 
 Rossi (H. P. Phelps) : The fencing was a marvel of 
 skill, but the killing of the King was a stroke of genius, 
 in fact a touch of realism almost awful to behold. All 
 through the scene Hamlet's hatred of the murderer had 
 been manifest, particularly when the King drank his 
 health. But when the treachery was all out, and Ham- 
 let knew that he himself was dying, the climax of revenge 
 was reached. The end came quickly and unexpected. 
 Hamlet approached the King sideways and with one 
 swift backward stroke of the rapier, pierces his very 
 heart. It was Italian and it was terrible. Hamlet dies 
 on the throng where he belongs, to the triumphal music 
 of young Fortinbras's return — 
 
 " With conquest come from Poland." 
 
 (William Winter) : Last of all, the slaughter of the 
 monarch was accomplished with bowl as well as dagger, 
 and it was felt to be a signal mercy that the Melancholy 
 Dane did not wind up by dancing on the royal stomach 
 and taking the annointed scalp. 
 
 (Rossi) : In the fencing scene Hamlet, aware that 
 Laertes is a skilful swordsman, puts forth his own dex- 
 terity to its utmost limit, so that, as a matter of fact, he 
 touches his adversary twice in succession. How is it, 
 that Laertes, so accomplished in the use of the foils, re- 
 ceives two thrusts from the man whose life he has re- 
 solved to take? It is because for the first time he 
 contemplates a dishonorable action, and his hand is un- 
 
HAMLET. i6i 
 
 steadied by his conscience. At the third assault, how- 
 ever, the two advantages obtained by Hamlet stimulate 
 him to press his opponent eagerly ; thrusts and parries 
 are rapidly exchanged, and one of the former takes effect 
 upon Hamlet's breast, which is slightly wounded by the 
 poisoned point of Laertes's foil, from which the button 
 has been removed. As soon as Laertes feels that his 
 dastardly purpose has been accomplished, his grasp of 
 the foil slackens, and Hamlet disarms him with ease, 
 offering him, with the courtesy of a high-bred gentle- 
 man, his own (Hamlet's) foil, and retaining for his own 
 use the one he had just wrested from his (Laertes') hand. 
 Laertes, " caught in his own springe," cannot refuse, 
 although the King endeavors to stay his hand. Ham- 
 let's attack is irresistible, and his blade, which he does 
 not know to be sharp at the point, passes through his 
 adversary's chest. This is my view of the encounter, 
 and thus do I invariably play it. I hold it an error to 
 assume that Hamlet wounds Laertes because he has 
 been hurt by the latter. In my opinion Hamlet believes 
 the foils to be buttoned in the usual way, and, unaware 
 that Laertes has hit him, makes the last and deadly 
 thrust merely with the object of " winning at the odds." 
 Laertes, when it is too late, comprehends the atrocity of 
 which he has been guilty, confesses his crime, and lays 
 it at the door of the King. At this supreme moment, 
 in which Hamlet becomes at once judge and execu- 
 tioner, I take leave to interpret Shakspeare's idea in 
 action thus : I seize the poisoned foil by the middle of 
 the blade, holding it as one would hold a dagger, rush 
 to the throne, grasp the King's throat, turn away my 
 head, and plunge the deadly steel into his heart. It is 
 
1 62 HAMLET. 
 
 the " incestuous, adulterate beast " whom he is punish- 
 ing ; he therefore slays him without giving him time to 
 defend himself, even forcing him to swallow the poisoned 
 potion, too, so that he may die without having a mo- 
 ment's time wherein to recommend his soul to God. 
 
 (Mary Cowden Clarke, writing from Genoa in 1873): 
 The fencing-match in the last scene was an exquisite 
 piece of grace and manliness, while the closing touch 
 of making the Danish prince stagger on to the throned 
 seat when effecting the death of his usurping uncle, and 
 there towering above the mass of human ruin brought 
 about by his kinsman-foe, formed a picturesque and 
 appropriate final effect to the drama. 
 
 Edwin Booth ( Furness ) : In the fencing-scene the 
 wounding of Laertes with his own weapon is thus skil- 
 fully managed by Mr. Booth : Hamlet secures Laertes's 
 foil by a powerful parry of his thrust in carte, by which 
 Hamlet disarms him ; catching his foil as it leaves his 
 grasp with the left hand, Hamlet uses it as a dagger, 
 being too close to him for a free use of his own weapon. 
 Should a stickler for the " code " object to this " pass 
 of practice", it may be urged that the men are "in- 
 censed " and excitement must excuse it, and Laertes is 
 estopped from demanding fair play, since his own has 
 been foul from the start. 
 
 Wilson Barrett {Shakspeariana) : Having at last 
 swooped to his revenge, he sinks, stricken with the 
 poison, in Horatio's arms, his fumbling fingers search- 
 ing at his breast for what Horatio guesses, finds, and 
 lifts before his eyes — ^his father's picture — then the 
 
HAMLET. 163 
 
 dying face lights up with the fine content of loyal love, 
 and the end is sweet and fit. 
 
 Macready told the story, retold by Murdoch, of a 
 western actor who supported the English tragedian, 
 playing the King. Macready was anxious to have the 
 King fall in the last act when stabbed, over the steps of 
 the throne and on the right-hand side with his feet to 
 the left, in order that when Hamlet fell he should have 
 the centre of the stage. No objection was made to this 
 request on the part of the actor at rehearsal, but at 
 night, to Hamlet's surprise and disgust, the King 
 wheeled directly around after receiving the sword-thrust, 
 and deliberately fell in the midst of the scene where 
 Hamlet was in the habit of dying, forcing the melan- 
 choly prince to find another place as he could. When 
 expostulated with by Mr. Macready, His Majesty coolly 
 replied, "Mr. Macready, we western people don't know 
 much about kings except that they have a habit of 
 doing as they like, and I thought as I was King, I had 
 a right to die wherever I d d pleased." 
 
 Macready (Henry Irving) : A friend of mine was 
 once a dear friend of Wilham Charles Macready, and 
 was with him at his final performance of Hamlet. The 
 play was over, the curtain had fallen, and the great 
 actor was sadly thinking that for the last time he had 
 acted his much-loved part. Almost unconsciously, as 
 he was taking off his velvet mantle and laying it aside, 
 he muttered Horatio's words, "Good-night, sweet 
 prince," and then, turning to his friend, "Ah," said he, 
 "I am just beginning to realize the sweetness, the 
 tenderness, the gentleness of the character." 
 
i64 HAMLET. 
 
 gamljet as atx ©pjeta. 
 
 Hamlet, an opera by Ambroise Thomas, words by 
 Barbier and Carre, was produced at the Academie in 
 Paris, March 9, 1 868 ; in London in Italian, as Amleto, 
 at Covent Garden, June 19, 1869, with Nilsson and Sant- 
 ley in the principal roles. Next to Christine Nilsson, 
 the original Ophelia of the lyric stage, Albani has been 
 considered the best representative of the character. 
 The opera has never been popular either in England or 
 in this country. The composer, however, stipulated that 
 Mr. Gye should retain the exclusive English right on con- 
 dition of presenting it at Covent Garden every season; 
 and for several years it was performed once each season. 
 The play-scene in the opera terminates with a drinking 
 song and chorus for Hamlet and the courtiers. It has 
 been said (Edwards's "Lyrical Drama") that it should 
 have been called Ophelia, as she is the principal person 
 both in a musical and dramatic point of view, and the 
 best scene in the opera is not in the play at all. There 
 is a tinge of Scandinavian national color to the music, 
 by reproducing the character of the Swedish melodies 
 in both the heroine's grand scenas and of employing here 
 and there actual passages of Swedish origin. Nilsson 
 was an admirable representative of the heroine. 
 
 Amleto, an opera byZeno and Gasparini, was brought 
 out in 171 1. Dr. Burney says it was written for Venice, 
 but was produced at the Queen's Theatre in London, and 
 the overture had four movements ending with a jig. 
 
 Washington Irving wrote, April 17, 1848, to Mr. 
 James H. Hackett, that within the current century " I 
 have seen the ballet of Hamlet gravely danced at Vienna." 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 165 
 
 [Harper's Magazine.'] 
 
 The music sung to the fragments of songs in the 
 character of Ophelia is the same, or very nearly the 
 same, as it was in the time of Shakspeare. Transmit- 
 ted by tradition, it was endeared to the popular ear by 
 memories which have blended themselves with the melo- 
 dies, and now refuse to be divorced. When the great 
 fire occurred in Drury Lane in 18 12 it destroyed the 
 entire musical library of the theatre, and the copy of 
 these songs was burned ; but Dr. Arnold carefully re- 
 noted them from Mrs. Jordan's singing, and it is not 
 likely that more modern music will ever be substituted 
 for these wild, pathetic melodies. 
 
 The first three fragments appear to be part of the 
 same ballad, and are very likely, as the king observes, 
 " a conceit upon her father." 
 
 And how should I your true love know From many an-oth-er 
 
 one ? Oh, by his cock-le hat and staff. And by his san-dal shoon. 
 
 He is dead and gone, lady, 
 
 He is dead and gone ; 
 At his head a grass-green turf. 
 
 At his heels a stone. 
 
 White his shroud as the mountain snow, 
 
 Larded all with sweet flowers. 
 Which bewept to the grave did go. 
 
 With true-love showers. 
 
 The next two, " Good-morrow, 'tis St. Valentine's 
 Day," and " By Gis and by Saint Charity," are evidently 
 
i66 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 suggested to her mind by some obscure association with 
 her own unfortunate love. The httle song of St. Valen- 
 tine below has a simple and antique melody that is 
 peculiarly fitting and charming. 
 
 Cheerfully. 
 
 lii^^ 
 
 =!•-•- 
 
 3-Z 
 
 -m- 1^ 
 
 Good mor-row, 'tis St. Valentine's day, All in the morn ng be- 
 
 i=:fc 
 
 =l=zz|= 
 
 =!i=i= 
 
 -\ — I — I — I — i^ 
 -&» Iw— «■!- 
 
 =*= ::q:=*>a==5; 
 
 :=1- 
 
 =Sl=P=a= 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 lime; And I a maid at your win-dow, To be your Val-en-ti -e. 
 
 The next ballad the poor girl sings shows that her 
 mind has again reverted to her father, and the scene 
 closes with two beautiful fragments, which also were 
 evidently intended to refer to his melancholy fate. 
 
 They bore him barefaced on the bier 
 And in his grave rain'd many a tear. 
 And will he not come again ? 
 And will he not come again ? 
 No, no, he is dead ; 
 Go to thy death-bed, 
 He never will come again. 
 
 
 "*=3-«iFS- 
 
 And' will he not come a-gain? And will he not come a-gain? No, 
 
 no, he is dead; Go to thy death-bed. He nev-er will come a-gain. 
 The vacillating, wandering mind of Ophelia is ren- 
 dered painfully apparent at this point by her insertion 
 between these two pathetic verses of two idle, foolish 
 ballad lines : 
 
 Down, a-down, an you call him a-down-a, 
 and 
 
 For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. 
 
HAMLET. 167 
 
 The grave-digger's song, 
 
 A pickaxe and a spade, a spade. 
 
 For — and a shrouding sheet; 
 Oh, a pit of day for to be made 
 
 For such a guest is meet, 
 
 IS by all traditions of the stage sung to the following 
 old air, which is the original music to the famous ballad 
 of the " Children in the Wood : " 
 
 i 
 
 3E 
 
 3=1= 
 
 pEpgESS 
 
 =fc 
 
 z*z 
 
 m 
 
 
 The other stanzas which he sings are from an old 
 ballad made in Edward the Sixth's or Mary's time, and 
 which is preserved in Chappell's ancient ballad music. 
 
 ^txe (^nwcXa gtamX^t ^ctM. 
 
 At St. George's Hall, London, April 16, 1881, the 
 first Quarto Hamlet was acted by amateurs. The cus- 
 toms supposed to be in vogue in Shakspeare's days were 
 rigorously observed. No scenery or decoration beyond 
 a raised platform on which the dumb show was presented, 
 was employed, and the costumes were all Elizabethan. 
 
 As to this version, two theories are advanced, one that 
 it was the first draft of the play, the other that it was a 
 mutilated and pirated version. It lacks most of the 
 poetry and all that is philosophical. 
 
J 68 HAMLET. 
 
 April 29, 1886, at the Academy of Music in New 
 York: 
 
 Hamlet Edwin Booth. 
 
 Ghost Salvini, 
 
 King Barton Hill. 
 
 Queen Mrs. D. P. Bowers. 
 
 Laertes Alex. Salvini. 
 
 Polonius C. W. Couldock. 
 
 Ophelia Marie Wainwright. 
 
 The most remarkable cast ever given the play in 
 America was at the Wallack benefit at the Metropolitan 
 Opera House in New York, May 21, 1888. It was as 
 follows : 
 
 Hamlet Edwin Booth. 
 
 Ghost Lawrence Barrett. 
 
 King Frank Mayo. 
 
 Polonius , John Gilbert. 
 
 Laertes Eben Plympton. 
 
 Horatio John A. Lane. 
 
 First Actor Joseph Wheelock. 
 
 Second Actor Milnes Levick. 
 
 Priest Harry Edwards. 
 
 First Grave-digger Joseph Jefferson. 
 
 Second Grave-digger W. J. Florence. 
 
 Queen Gertrude Kellogg. 
 
 Player-Queen Rose Coghlan. 
 
 Ophelia Modjeska. 
 
HAMLET 169 
 
 Following is a list of the books to which I am indebted 
 for much of the material contained in this work : 
 
 Dramatic Miscellanies, by Thomas Davies, London, 1784. 
 
 Memoirs of David Garrick, by the same, London, 1780. 
 
 Roscius Anglicanus, by John Downes, London, 1708. 
 
 Apology for the Life of Colley Gibber, by himself, London, 
 1740. 
 
 Biographia Dramatica, by D. E. Baker, London, 1812. 
 
 Life of James Philip Kemble, by James Boaden, London, 
 1825- 
 
 Some Account of the English Stage, by John Genest, Bath, 
 1832. 
 
 Life of Mrs. Siddons, by Thomas Campbell, London, 1834. 
 
 Life of Edmund Kean, by Barry Gornwall, London, 1835. 
 
 Life of Charles Kean, by J. W. Cole, London, 1859. 
 
 Memoirs of Geo. F. Cooke, by William Dunlap, London, 
 1813. 
 
 View of English Stage, by Wm. Hazlitt, London, 18 18. 
 
 Macready's Reminiscences, by Fred. Pollock, London, 1875. 
 
 Actors and the Art of Acting, by Geo. Henry Lewes, New 
 York, 1878. 
 
 Some Famous Hamlets, by Austin Brereton, London, 1884. 
 
 Shakspeare's Plays and Actors, by Jas. H. Hackett, New 
 York, 1863. 
 
 The Stage, by James E. Murdoch, Philadelphia, 1880. 
 
 Life of Edwin Forrest, by W. R. Alger, Philadelphia, 1877, 
 
 Life of Edwin Forrest, by James Rees, Philadelphia. 
 
 Life of Edwin Forrest, by Lawrence Barrett, Boston, 1881. 
 
 Charles Albert Fechter, by Kate Field, Boston, 1882. 
 
 The Booths, by Asia Booth Clarke, Boston, 1882. 
 
 Edwin Booth, by William Winter, Boston, 1872. 
 
 Henry Irving, by Austin Brereton, London, 1883. 
 
lyo 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 Irving as Hamlet, by Edwin R. Russell, London. 
 
 Variorum Shakspeare, by H. Howard Fumess, Philadelphia. 
 
 Nights at the Play, by Button Cook, London, 1883. 
 
 The Tragedian, by Thos. R. Gould, Boston, 1868, 
 
 History of American Theatre, Geo. O. Seilhamer, Phila/- 
 delphia, 1888. 
 
 Records of a Girlhood, by Fanny Kemble, New York, 1879. 
 
 The Lyrical Drama, by H. Sutherland Edwards, London, 
 1871. 
 
 Dramatic Notes, London. 
 
 The Theatre, London. 
 
 The Theatre, New York. 
 
 London Athenaeum, Shakspeariana, Harper's Magazine, The 
 Atlantic, Old and New The Galaxy, etc., etc. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 PACE. 
 
 Abbott, William 54 
 
 Adams, Edwin 52 
 
 Adams, John Jay j4 
 
 Adams, Serjeant 17^ 146 
 
 Addams, Augustus A 54 
 
 Addison, Joseph 5, 6, 77, 132 
 
 Agar, Mme 5 y 
 
 Age of Hamlet 47, 68 
 
 Albani, as Ophelia 164 
 
 Alger, W. R., quoted 66, 83, 99, 102, 139, 153, 158, 169 
 
 Alterations of Hamlet by Garrick 6-9 
 
 Anderson, J. R 54 
 
 Anderson, Gen. Robert 30 
 
 Arnold, Dr. Samuel i65 
 
 Arnold, George J 54 
 
 Aston, Anthony, on Betterton 5 
 
 Astor Place Riot 20 
 
 Athenaeum, London, on Salvini 44 
 
 Baddeley, Robert 94 
 
 Baddeley, Mrs 95 
 
 Baker, D. E 169 
 
 Ballet, Hamlet as a 164 
 
 Bancroft, George 30 
 
 Bandmann, Daniel E 52, 143 
 
 Bannister, as the Grave-digger 12 
 
 Barbier 164 
 
 Barnay, Ludwig, as Hamlet 36, 52, 106, III, 145 
 
 Barnes, Charlotte, as Hamlet 54, 55 
 
 Barrett, Lawrence, quoted 2j 
 
 as Hamlet 51, 146, 169 
 
 Barrett, Wilson, as Hamlet 47, 67, 68, 71, 74, 77, 88, 105, 115 
 
 125, 131, 147, 159, 162 
 
172 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Barron, Elwyn H., criticism on Modjeska 96 
 
 Barry, Spranger 103, 106, 112, 132 
 
 Barry, Thomas 120 
 
 Barton, Mr 54 
 
 Bartow, Mr 54 
 
 Belgarde, Adele, as Hamlet 54 
 
 Bellew, J. M., readings 58 
 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, as Ophelia 55, 120, 128, 150 
 
 Betterton, Thomas 3, 56, 77 
 
 Betterton, Mrs 95, 145 
 
 Bierstadt, Albert 30 
 
 Boaden, James, quoted 8, 9, 73, 74, 81, 90, 95, loi, 107, 113, 122 
 
 'SS. 169 
 
 Booth, Barton, as the Ghost 6, 79 
 
 Booth, Edwin, as Hamlet 29-43, S3- 69, 72, 86, 87, 116, 126, 134 
 
 140, 141, 154, 156, 162 
 
 poetry to 42 
 
 quoted 63 
 
 Booth, John Wilkes 29 
 
 Booth, Junius Brutus (the Elder), as Hamlet 15,29, 65, 70, 76, 82 
 
 90, 98, 100, 104, 107, 113, 122, 123, 130, 137, 152, 157 
 
 Booth and the horse-thief 15 
 
 Booth, Junius Brutus, Jr 29 
 
 Bos well, James 89 
 
 Bowers, Mrs. D. P 168 
 
 Brereton, Austin, quoted 4 
 
 on Irving 45, 46, 169 
 
 Brooke, Gustavus V 58 
 
 Brown, Fred 54 
 
 Buchanan, McKean 54, 58 
 
 Burbage, Richard, as Hamlet 3 
 
 Burney, Dr. Charles 164 
 
 Burton, William E 29 
 
 Calhoun, Lucia Gilbert, on Edwin Booth 69. 72, 86, 87, 116, 126 
 
 141, 156 
 
 Campbell, Thomas 151, 169 
 
 Carr6 164 
 
 Casts of Hamlet 168 
 
 Cibber, CoUey 5, 132 
 
 quoted 77, 169 
 
 Cibber, Mrs 95 , 
 
 Clarke, Asia Booth, on Edwin Booth 109, 156, 169 
 
INDEX. 173 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Clarke, Mary Cowden l52 
 
 Clarke, John H e. 
 
 Clason, Mr .' _ _ _ _ p , 
 
 Clive, Mrs oc 
 
 Coghlan, Rose igg 
 
 Cole, J. W., (Charles Kean's biographer,) quoted 17, 89, 119, 128 
 
 146. 169 
 
 Collier, Payne . 
 
 Collins, Wilkie 102 
 
 Conway. Mrs. F. B e^ 
 
 Conway, William Augustus ch 
 
 Cook, Dutton, on Fechter 23 
 
 on Edwin Booth , ^6, 1 70 
 
 Cooke, George Frederick, as Hamlet 10, 52 
 
 Cooper, Thomas A j7 
 
 Cornwall, Barry, on Edmund Kean's Hamlet 13, 169 
 
 Costume for Hamlet {see Dress). 
 
 Couldock, C. W : 168 
 
 Cowen, Joe 83 
 
 Cressonnois, M 56 
 
 Creswick, William 51 
 
 Cross 94 
 
 Curtis, George William, on Edwin Booth 30, 140 
 
 Cushman, Charlotte 51, 54, 55 
 
 Dana, Charles A 30 
 
 Davenant, Sir William 4 
 
 Davenport, E. L 51, 54, no 
 
 Daubign^ 49 
 
 Davies, Thomas, quoted 3, 4, 7, 78, 79, 94, 95, 105, 106, 112 
 
 121, 125, 131, 132, 133, 145, 146, 152, 169 
 
 Dawison, Bogumil - 5^ 
 
 Denin, Susan 54 
 
 Devrient, Emil 25, 36, 39, 53 
 
 Dickens, Charles, on Fechter 25, 26 
 
 Dickinson, Anna 52> 54 
 
 Dithmar, E. A., quoted 93, loi, 106, in, 118, 145, 146 
 
 Division of the Play 105, 148, I49 
 
 Downes, John, quoted 4> 1^9 
 
 Dowton, as Polonius 12 
 
 Douglass, Mr 53 
 
 Dress of Hamlet 5. ". ^S. "9. »20 
 
174 INDEX. 
 
 PACK. 
 
 Dress of Folonius 95 
 
 Dress of Ophelia 97 
 
 Duff, John R 54 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre 57 
 
 Dunlap, William 10, 169 
 
 Eddy, Edward 54 
 
 Edwin, Mr 94 
 
 Edwards, Harry 168 
 
 Edwards, H. Sutherland 170 
 
 Ellsworth, Mrs 69 
 
 Farragut, Admiral 30 
 
 Fechter, Charles, as Hamlet 22-28, 53, 56, 57, 59, 67, 73, 74, 77 
 
 84, 88, 91, 95, 98, loi, 102, 104, no, 114, 122, 124 
 
 143. 152. IS4. 155. IS9 
 
 Female Hamlets 54, 55 
 
 Fennell, James 53 
 
 Field, Kate, quoted 23, 65, 67, 73, 74, 77, 84, 91, 98, lol, 104, no 
 
 114, 124, 143, 154, ISS, 159, 169 
 
 Fielding, Henry 88 
 
 Finn, Henry J 54 
 
 First Hamlet in America 53 
 
 First Hamlet in Few York 53 
 
 First American-born Hamlet 53 
 
 First woman actress 5 
 
 Fisher, Clara 54 
 
 Fitzpatrick, J. H., on Fechter 1 no, 125, 159 
 
 Florence, William J 16& 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, the Macready riot 20, 21 
 
 Forrest and Barry Sullivan 21 
 
 as Hamlet 22, 52, 66, 83, 99, 130, 139, 153, 158 
 
 French Hamlets 55-57 
 
 Fullerton, William 30 
 
 Furness, H. Howard, quoted 63, 102. 134, 162, 170 
 
 Garrick, David, alterations of Hamlet 7, 8 
 
 as Hamlet 6, 71, 75, 79, 81, 88, 89, loi, 103, 106 
 
 107, III, 112, 121, 123, 125, 128, 131, 132, 146 
 
 Garrick, Mrs., instructs Edmund Kean 13 
 
 Garnier, M., as Hamlet [jj, 56 
 
 Gasparini 164 
 
INDEX. 
 
 175 
 
 Genest, Rev, John, quoted 151, 169 
 
 German criticisms on Booth's Hamlet 36-40 
 
 Gilbert, John 168 
 
 Ghost, as the. Barton Booth 6, 79 
 
 Salvini 92, 9^ 
 
 Possart 146 
 
 Goethe 27 
 
 Got, M 57, 60 
 
 Gould, Thomas R., on the Elder Booth's Hamlet 65, 70, 82, 96 
 
 98, 100, 104, 107. 113, 123, 130, 137, 152, IS7, 170 
 
 Graham, Richard 54 
 
 Grattan, H. P 54 
 
 Griffin 94 
 
 Gye, Mr 164 
 
 Hackett, James H., on Edmund Kean 14 
 
 on the Elder Booth 15 
 
 on Charles Kean 16 
 
 on Macready 18 
 
 on Forrest 22 
 
 quoted 63, 75, 99, 100, 108, 113, 115, 122 
 
 123, 129, 142, 144, 154, 169 
 
 Hallam, first American Hamlet - 53 
 
 Hallam, Mrs HS 
 
 Hamlet, popularity of 3, 63 
 
 first acted 3 
 
 why fat and scant of breath 4 
 
 dress {see Dress). 
 
 as an opera 164 
 
 as a ballet ■ 164 
 
 songs and music of i55) 166 
 
 the quarto 167 
 
 casts of 168 
 
 in Paris 55. 5^ 
 
 first acted 3 
 
 first American 53 
 
 female representatives 54> 55 
 
 Hardy, Lady, quoted ' > 7 
 
 Harman, Mrs., as Ophelia 53 
 
 Harris, Mr - - 75 
 
 Hasse, as Hamlet 5^ 
 
176 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, on Edmund Kean 13, 14, 52, 63, 81, 98, loi 
 
 107, 112, 123, 169 
 
 Henderson, John, as Hamlet 73, 90, 112, 121, 133, 146 
 
 Hendrich, Hermann 23 
 
 Hicks, Charles Carroll 54 
 
 Hill, Barton 168 
 
 Hippsley 94 
 
 Hoffman, Gov. John T 30 
 
 Holman, George 53 
 
 Hulet, Charles 117 
 
 Hutton, Laurence, quoted 51, 53, 141 
 
 Irving, Henry, as Hamlet 44-47) S8, 70, 88, 90, 92, 105, 117 
 
 127, 13s, 147, ISS, 158 
 
 Irving, Washington 164 
 
 James, Louis 5^> K^'t l<^^> \\i, 146 
 
 Jefferson, Joseph 168 
 
 Johnson, B., as Grave-digger 152 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel 74, 89, 94 
 
 Johnston, H. E 54 
 
 Jordan, George 69 
 
 Jordan, Mrs 165 
 
 Kean, Charles, as Hamlet 16, 36, 66, 109, 119, 123, 142, 155 
 
 Kean, Edmund, as Hamlet 12-15, I7> ^i' ^3' 9°> 9^' ■°7' 112, 123 
 
 Keen 131 
 
 Kemble, Charles, as Hamlet 11, 54, 57 
 
 Kemble, Fanny, as Ophelia 11, 170 
 
 Kemble, John Philip, as Hamlet 10, 17, 73, 74, 81, 95, 100, loi 
 
 113, 119, 120, 123, 129, 132, 146, 155 
 
 Kemble, Stephen, as Hamlet 11 
 
 Kempe 152 
 
 Kepple, W. H '. 54 
 
 Knight, Joseph, on French Hamlets 5S 
 
 quoted 120, 128, 150 
 
 Kellogg, Gertrude 168 
 
 Lamb, Charles 71 
 
 Lane, John A 168 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas 52 
 
 Levick, Milnes 168 
 
INDEX. 
 
 77 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Lewes, George Henry, on Macready i8 
 
 on Fechter 26 
 
 on Salvini 43 
 
 quoted 65, IIS, 125, 158, 169 
 
 Lichtenberg, G. C, on Garrick 71, 79, 1 1 1 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham 29 
 
 Lockhart, J. G 17 
 
 Loraine, H 54 
 
 Lovell 94 
 
 Lowell, James Russell 28 
 
 Lowin, John 4 
 
 Macklin, Charles 78 
 
 Macready, William C, as Hamlet 18-21, 53, 75, 99, 108, 109, 115 
 
 122, 123, 129, 163 
 
 Forrest riot 20 
 
 Murdoch on 19, 52 
 
 Mantell, Robert 52, 100, iii 
 
 Marriott, Miss, as Hamlet 54, 55 
 
 Marshall, W 54 
 
 Mayo, Frank 52, 168 
 
 May wood, Robert Campbell 54 
 
 McCuUough, John 52, 54 
 
 Medal presented Edwin Booth 30 
 
 Merivale, J. H 17 
 
 Meurice, Paul 57 
 
 Modjeska as Ophelia 96, 168 
 
 Molloy, J. Fitzgerald 83 
 
 Montague, Winnetta, as Hamlet 54 
 
 Montgomery, Walter 58 
 
 Morris, Mrs., as Ophelia 53 
 
 Mountford, Mrs., as Ophelia 151 
 
 Mozart 99 
 
 Murdoch, James E 54, 120 
 
 on Macready 19 
 
 quoted 52, 107, 163, 169 
 
 Murray, Mr 20 
 
 Music of Hamlet 165 
 
 Neafie, J. A. J 54 
 
 Nilsson, as Ophelia 164 
 
 Nokes , , -^ , . , , , .3 , „ 84 
 
178 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nugent, Michael, quoted I19, 156 
 
 Nym Crinkle (^See Wheeler, A. C). 
 
 O'Gorman, Richard 30 
 
 Opera of Hamlet - 164 
 
 Ophelia, Modjeska as 96 
 
 Mountford, Mrs, as 151 
 
 Siddons, as - 151 
 
 Ophelia, Character of 96 
 
 Oxiey, John R 54 
 
 Palmer, Admiral 30 
 
 Payne, John Howard, first American-born Hamlet 53 
 
 Pelby, William 54 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, quoted 5 
 
 Pitt, Charles Dibdin 54 
 
 Plympton, Eben 168 
 
 Poetical tribute to Edwin Booth 42 
 
 Pollock, Frederick 169 
 
 Polonius 94 
 
 Pomeroy, Louise 54 
 
 Popularity of Hamlet 4, 63 
 
 Porter, Mrs 145 
 
 Possart, as the Ghost 146 
 
 Pritchard, Mrs 145 
 
 Quarto Hamlet acted 167 
 
 Quelch, as the Ghost 53 
 
 Quin, James 131 
 
 Raphael 49 
 
 Raymond, as the Ghost 12 
 
 Rees, James, quoted 21, 169 
 
 Reynolds, Frederick 75 
 
 Rossi, as Hamlet 48-50, 76, 82, 92, 100, 103, 105, 109, 115, 126 
 
 129, 131, 135, 140, 141, 160, 162 
 
 Russell, Edward R., on Irving 88, 90, 92, 106, n8, 127, 170 
 
 Ryan, Lacy 131 
 
 Salvini, Alexander 168 
 
 Salvini, Tommaso, as Hamlet 43, 115, 125, 136, 158 
 
 as the Ghost 92, 93 
 
 Samson, M 56 
 
INDEX. 179 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Sanderson, Mistress, first woman actress 5 
 
 Santley, Charles 164 
 
 Schlegel, Augustus William 4 
 
 Scott, Clement, on Fechter 27 
 
 on Edwin Booth 22 
 
 on Wilson Barrett 48, 125 
 
 Scott, John R 54 
 
 Scott, Sir William 17 
 
 Seaman, Julia, as Hamlet 54 
 
 Seilhamer, George O., quoted , 53, 170 
 
 Shaw, Eliza 54 
 
 Sheridan 112 
 
 Shuter, Edward 94 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., as Ophelia 151 
 
 Simpson, J. Palgrave. on Edwin Booth 35 
 
 Skull used by the Booths 14, 15 
 
 Sly, Augustin 152 
 
 Smith, Miss (Mrs. Bartley) iz 
 
 Smith 112 
 
 Songs of Hamlet 165, 166 
 
 Stark, James 54 
 
 Steele, Sir Joshua 107 
 
 Sullivan, Barry 21, 51, 54, 58, 99 
 
 Sully, Mounet, as Hamlet 57 
 
 Talford, Serjeant • 17 
 
 Tarleton, Richard 152 
 
 Taswell 94 
 
 Taylor, Joseph 4 
 
 Terry, Ellen 46 
 
 Thomas, Arabroise 164 
 
 Tuckerman, Henry T 109 
 
 Underbill, Cabe, as the Grave-digger 152 
 
 VandenhofF, George 54 
 
 Vandenhoif, John 123 
 
 Vezin, Herman, on Fechter 23 
 
 on Charles Kean 66 
 
 Wagner, Joseph 37. 39 
 
 Wainwright, Marie 168 
 
 Wallack (J. Lester), benefit 168 
 
 Wallack, Fanny 54 
 
i8o INDEX. 
 
 FAGS. 
 
 Wallack, Henry 54 
 
 Wallack, J. W 54, 57 
 
 Waller, Emma 54 
 
 Waller, Wilmarth 54 
 
 Walton, F. J ■ 95 
 
 Wheeler, A. C, on Rossi 48 
 
 Wheelock, Joseph 168 
 
 White, Richard Grant 23 
 
 Wilks, Robert, as Hamlet 6, 103, 112, 121, 132 
 
 Wilson, Mr 94 
 
 Winter, William, on Edwin Booth 29-31, 32, 40, 42 
 
 on Rossi 49, 52 
 
 on female Hamlets 55 
 
 quoted 85, 92, 100, 103, 105, no, 115, 126 
 
 140, 153, 160, 169 
 
 Woffington, Peg, as Ophelia 6 
 
 Woods, George B., on Fechter 27, 28, 88, 105 
 
 Woodward, as Polonius 95 
 
 Yates, Edmund, on French Hamlets 57 
 
 Young, Charles Mayne, as Hamlet 12, 17 
 
 Zeno 164