find him indistinct. Many declare roundly he cannot read Shakespeare. There are others who generously observe that Hamlets are not judged by the first act; but over all, disputants or enthusiasts, has already been thrown an indescribable spell. None can explain it; but all are now spellbound. The Hamlet is "thinking aloud," as Hazlitt wished. He is as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible, and "as little of the actor."

We in the audience see the mind of Hamlet. We care little what he does, how he walks, when he draws his sword. We can almost realise the working of his brain. His soliloquies are not spoken down at the footlights to the audience. Hamlet is looking into a glass, into "his mind's eye, Horatio!" His eyes are fixed apparently on nothing,

though ever eloquent. He gazes on vacancy and communes with his conscience. Those only who have closely watched Hamlet through the first act could adequately express the impression made. But it has affected the whole audience the Kemble lovers, the Kean admirers, and the Fechter rhapsodists. They do not know how it is, but they are spellbound with the incomparable expression of moral poison.

The second act ends with nearly the same result. There is not an actor living who, on attempting Hamlet, has not made his points in the speech, "Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" But Mr. Irving's intention is not to make points, but to give a consistent reading of a Hamlet who "thinks aloud." For one instant he falls "a cursing like a very drab,

a scullion," but only to relapse into a deeper despair, into more profound thought. He is not acting, he is not splitting the ears of the groundlings; he is an artist concealing his art: he is talking to himself; he is thinking aloud. Hamlet is suffering from moral poison, and the spell woven about the audience is more mysterious and incomprehensible in the second act than in the first.

In the third act the artist triumphs. No more doubt, no more hesitation, no more discussion. If Hamlet is to be played like a scholar and a gentleman, and not like an actor, this is the Hamlet. The scene with Ophelia turns the scale, and the success is from this instant complete. But we insist that it was not the triumph of an actor alone. It was

the realisation of all that the artist has

been foreshadowing. Mr. Irving made no sudden and striking effect, as did Mr. Kean. "Whatever nice faults might be found on this score," says Hazlitt,

they are amply redeemed by the manner of his coming back after he has 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 on the house." Mr. Irving did not make his success by any theatrical coup, but by the expression of the pent-up agony of a harassed and disappointed man. According to Mr. Irving, the very sight of Ophelia is the keynote of the outburst of his moral disturbance. He loves this woman; "forty thousand brothers" could not express his overwhelming passion, and think what might have happened if he had been allowed to love

E

her, if his ambition had been realised. The more he looks at Ophelia, the more he curses the irony of fate. He is surrounded, overwhelmed, and crushed by trouble, annoyance, and spies.

They are watching him behind the

arras.

Ophelia is set on to assist their plot. They are driving him mad, though he is only feigning madness. What a position for a harassed creature to endure! They are all against him. Hamlet alone in the world is born to "set it right." He is in the height and delirium of moral anguish. The distraction of the unhinged mind, swinging and banging about like a door; the infinite love and tenderness of the man who longs to be soft and gentle to the woman he adores; the horror and hatred of being trapped, and watched, and spied upon, were all expressed with