J. FORBES ROBERTSON LYCEUM THEATRE, SEPTEMBER 13, 1897 "MY Y dear sir, the man was born to play Hamlet!" These were the words of the oldest Shakespearian scholar and critic in that remarkable audience at the Lyceum Theatre on Saturday evening, September 13th, 1897, and they were spoken when Forbes Robertson was only half-way towards the attainment of the brilliant success that he ultimately achieved. Long before he stirred experience to enthusiasm — no small fact where Shakespeare and Hamlet are concerned he had been pronounced the most human, the most natural, and in temperament the most lovable of all the Hamlets of our time, English, French, Italian, or German. And is it not true that many of us who have followed the fortunes of the stage for years past have thought very much the same thing, and predicted the same Hamlet, ever since young Forbes Robertson first stepped on the boards of the Princess's Theatre as the romantic and earnest lover of Mary Queen of Scots, down to the days of Arthur Dimsdale in the Scarlet Letter, and so with never a failure to the beautiful picture of Buckingham in King Henry VIII.? If ever an actor had the inborn spirit of which ideal Hamlets are made, that actor was assuredly Forbes Robertson. "It is we who are Hamlet," observed Hazlitt in his well-known laconic criti cism, and this is the thought that Forbes Robertson so vividly impressed on his enthralled and attentive audience. We all at some time or other have had the pain of burdens thrust on us almost too great to bear. We all, if not exactly religious, have pondered on religion, and wondered in secret, as Hamlet did, of the marvels and mysteries of life, and the awful problem of that "unknown land" that awaits us all. On us destiny has set its seal, and we have had to exchange our boyish, frank, unsuspecting natures for the deep thought, anxiety, the trouble, and the irritability born of disappointment and despair. An Ophelia and a Gertrude and a Claudius-types of love, innocence, and passion-have forced themselves into our lives, and this is the reason we have to thank the |