who does not speak the words thus, speaks them wrong.)

Ham. A little more than kin,* and less than kind. King. How is it that the cloud still hangs upon you? Ham. Not so, my Lord; I am too much i' th' sun.

How sententious, and how completely in character with his soul, are these replies. The first (correctly) breaks in on the speech of the king. The second is at once ready and characteristic. Join these, with his two following replies to his mother, (the last, the best of the four,) and if the reader possess anything of quickness, he is at once let into the character of Hamlet. In this scene (and the words would be incorrect introduced earlier or later in the drama) he speaks the first of those inimitable soliloquies, than which, I know nothing more masterly in this divine bard. This soliloquy is not so hard to speak, as that grand piece of elocution and morality—

To be or not to be-that is the question.

The reason of it is, that there must be the most acute judgment observed in delivering this last one. It is a cold, deep, pithy, moralizing piece of oratory, and it is one actor in a thousand that can

*This is the Teutonick word for child,.

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properly conceive the part. The acting must be nothing but nature. Ranting is here (and indeed throughout the entire of this masterly character) completely done away. I could scarcely conceive anything more perfectly sickening than to see a robustious periwig pated fellow," go through this part with his turgid movements, his grand startings, and his see-saw motions. Hamlet must be played differently from all the other characters of Shakespeare. If a man does not possess all the requisites which I have already mentioned, I again repeat that he cannot do this princely and majestic personage.

I said that he who personated him, must assume half a dozen characters. He must not only assume, but he must sustain them. Here lies the difficulty-for-to sustain these characters, he must be gifted by NATURE with all the required endowments. There may be some other characters in these dramas (and perhaps I might be ready to admit it) where a fine flourish of hands, feet, and legs-a grand movement of some mighty fine bombastical arrangement, might for the moment strike, and perhaps deceive the eye; but in the royal Dane, it must be all temperance, and smoothness, and grace, and finished deportment. The very acutest judgment must be carried

through every line of it; if not, the personation degenerates into a sickening nothingness; and infinitely sooner would I prefer seeing the character regularly and manfully badly performed; than to have my ear tortured and nerves dilapidated by some vile would-be imitating the sublimity of it, and "curtailing it of its fair propor

tions.'

I spoke of the different shades of character of Hamlet. Hamlet is a gentleman-mark his demeanour through the entire of the play. Hamlet is a critic-mark his inimitable directions to the players. Hamlet is a scholar-various passages of the drama evince it. Hamlet possessed insinuating manners-read his suasive addresses to the lovely Ophelia, and contrast her opinions and ideas of him. Hamlet possessed a graceful figure-vide act iii. scene 1. - "The glass of fashion and the mould of form; the observed of all observers." Hamlet was a master of the graceful art of fencing-vide last act. Hamlet was a keen observer of human nature-take his pithy and correct remarks on man and the world, as examples of this. Hamlet appears in the character of the lover (and to a critic's eye, this is quite a distinct personation)-mark his love for

D

Ophelia, and read these exquisite lines to her brother

I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

The reader will allow me to call his attention to the three first words here-so simple, so striking, I loved Ophelia!

Hamlet was a

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The play tells us so.

courtier, soldier, and scholar." Hamlet assumed (and suc

cessfully maintained) the character of a madman. I have here shown Hamlet in a variety of characters. This last observation however opens somewhat of a wider field to me.

I have heard it remarked by many, and have further perused laborious papers on the subject; that the madness of Hamlet was not assumed, but was real! This is a proposition which I must endeavour to distinctly combat; nor can I at all see, on what fair and tenable grounds, the supporters of such proposition can rest their arguments. It strikes me that the play is completely altered the characters excessively lessened-the power and intellect of Hamlet made a nothing ofif this proposition can be made valid. How

greatly does Hamlet degenerate, if we consider his reason to be impaired. How far does he fall below that lordly (and I may add) majestic deportment-that high and grand solitariness of sentiment that graceful and winning demeanour which the poet has so nobly depicted him in, if we suppose him to be an ideot. Look now on the other side of the picture. Suppose him not mad. Suppose him to be in full exercise of those powers of reasoning, and that depth of intellect which is the noblest gift of man; and then observe how much more highly he appears in our esteem. This view of the portrait, makes him Hamlet-that view of it, makes him almost the meanest character in the play. Yet again. I unhesitatingly assert that to assume and perform well on the stage, the character of either a madman or a drunkard, is one of the very hardest exertions in the histrionic art. This was one of Garrick's (Garrick-thou unimitated! thou inimitable!) most excelling personations. Every would-be actor thinks this, an excessively easy thing. I have seen some of them imitate the drunkard and the madman, and they have done it so abominably, that I have often shut my eyes, or else taken up the play bill and read it over about one hundred