HAMLET. THE character of Hamlet has been, ever since the time of Shakespeare, the delight and the puzzle of scholars. The portrayal of it has been equally the ambition and the failure of actors. The scholar finds the drama eminently a tragedy of thought, and is apt to refine into abstraction the personality of the hero. The actor, depending in his art on presence and speech, usually fails to sound the depth of the character, to pluck out the heart of its mystery, and so gives its varied incident, action, dialogue, soliloquy, in a succession of incoherent, perhaps brilliant, effects. In Mr. Booth's conception, Hamlet was a character, not of melancholy, but of a predominant sensibility, which included melancholy. Not of madness, but of one who, bound by strange ties to the invisible world, found his large discourse of reason and his mastery of will distracted between opposing duties. In Hamlet, filial love amounted to a passion. And his father's spirit, in arms, appeared visibly to him, and audibly commanded him, in terms of solemn adjuration, to commit a deed abhorrent to his feelings as Booth's Hamlet was intensely perHis brain was a man. sonal. "The quick forge and working-house of thought.” His heart was full of purpose, as of affection. His indecision was the result of circumstances, not a defect of will. But this positive and personal life was so atmosphered by beauty, so steeped in melancholy, so spiritualized by supernatural emotion, that it seemed to us, in all essential qualities, the very Hamlet of Shakespeare. That phase of this many-sided creation to which he gave least effect, was the princeliness. That pensive grace and high breeding which many regard as Hamlet's permanent condition, ruffled only by passing gusts of passion, illuminated by fitful lights of philosophy and fancy, and crazed by ghostly visitation, found in him an indifferent interpreter. He seemed too severely exercised by "thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul" to mind the graces of the court; and his manner was seldom gentle, but rather "swift as meditation." Hamlet was Booth's favorite part. Among unnumbered representations, we select for special comment one which took place at the Howard Athenæum, in Boston, on that very winter's night when the steamer Atlantic was lost upon Long Island Sound, in a furious snow-storm "A brave vessel Which had no doubt some noble creatures in her, Owing to the weather the attendance was small. This circumstance aided the illusion of the opening scene, as if the scattered spectators were accidentally present, and looking at the chilled and lonely sentinels, pacing the ramparts of Elsinore castle. But the audience was fit though few. An eminent Shakespearean scholar sat with us, and a knot of literary friends. It was a noteworthy fact, however it might be accounted for, that Mr. Booth seemed to play better to a thin house. He appeared on the stage with his features. marred, with his natural hair turned irongray, and with no special help from costume, or scenery, or the other actors. But never did the soul of Hamlet shine forth more clearly with its own peculiar, fitful, far-reaching, saddened, and supernatural light. 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 his "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 commonness of death, he answers with restrained respect But when she urges a question of cold complaint, he vindicates the profound sincerity of his grief, in that fine speech beginning – “Seems, madam! 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 neither action nor language, however eloquent or effective, could ever fully reveal. "He had that within which passeth show." Hamlet is left alone, and instantly unburdens his heart in the soliloquy beginning The "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt." Did Shakespeare intend the speech to be uttered aloud, or only mused upon ? question becomes pertinent, in view of Lamb's objection to the stage representation of the play, where he speaks of Hamlet's "lightand-noise-abhorring ruminations." We think the terse vigor of the language would find a tongue. It did find an eloquent tongue in our actor. The jostle of thoughts, the impatient leaps of emotion, all crowding for utterance, found meet expression in his rapid and changeful delivery. "Frailty, thy name is woman," as if no other name were needed. "Married with mine uncle (pause), My father's brother" (in low and slighting tones), then without pause "But no more like my father Than I to Hercules." The following scene is chiefly remarkable |