artist. They freely confessed, that there might be endless varieties in the representation of such a character; justifiable, too, by very plausible reasonings; and congratulated themselves and the public upon a new and original actor, whose performances, at all events, would never disgust them by common place, but would at all times tend to make Shakspeare better known, by the necessity for his being more studied; that the reference must be perpetual from the actor to the works and in thus contributing to the fame of the poet, the performer might eventually establish his own. A pretty extensive list of such points is before me, noticed by myself and by others, where Mr. Kemble differed from Garrick or Henderson, or both. I am therefore quite sure that I do not attribute to the beginning of his career, what I only noticed in the progress. The points too are curious in themselves, and merit to be here preserved; besides, that criticism unexemplified is as fruitless as metaphysics where the terms are not defined. We must have the passage literally before us, to know what we talk about. The first objection was to an emphasis. He was instructed to say, "'Tis an un-weeded garden that grows to seed." But Mr. Kemble thought, and justly, that "unweeded" was quite as intelligible with the usual and proper accent as the improper one; and besides, that the exquisite modulation of the poet's verse should not be jolted out of its music, for the sake of giving a more pointed explanation of a word already sufficiently understood. "Sir, my good FRIEND! I'll change that name with you." Thus Mr. Kemble, upon Horatio's saying to Hamlet that he was his poor servant ever. Dr. Johnson conceives it to mean, "I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend." In which case the emphasis would rest thus: "Sir, my good FRIEND! I'll change that name with you." Perhaps it may be rather, "Change the term servant into that of friend. Consider us, without regard to rank, as friends." Henderson, evidently so understood it, for he said, "I'll change that name with rou. It was, I think, a novelty, when, after having recognized Horatio and Marcellus by name, Mr. Kemble turned cour teously towards Bernardo, and applied the "Good even, sir," to him. The commentators were too busy in debating whether it should be evening or morning, to bestow a thought as to the direction of this gentle salutation. It was observed how keenly Kemble inserted an insinuation of the King's intemperance, when he said to Horatio and the rest, "We'll teach you to DRINK deep,—ere you depart." He restored, with the modern editors of Shakspeare, "Dearest foe," and "Beteeme the winds of Heaven ;" and he was greatly censured for doing so, because, as the first term is unknown to the moderns in the sense of most important, or, as Johnson thought direst, and the word beteeme not known at all, the critic said, it might show reading so to speak them, but did not show clear meaning; a thing of more moment to a popular assembly. This is a question, I am sensible, on which a great deal may be said; but let it be observed, that it involves the integrity of a poet's text. For the present, let it rest. 66 My father,―methinks I see my father." Professor Richardson terms this "the most solemn and striking apostrophe that ever poet invented." Mr. Kemble seemed so to consider it :-the image entirely possessed his imagination; and accordingly, after attempting to pronounce his panegyric "He was a man, take him for all in all," a flood of tenderness came over him, and it was with tears he uttered, "I shall not look upon his like again." I know the almost stoical firmness with which others declaim this passage; and the political opposition affected, between the terms KING and MAN; but I must be excused, if I prefer the melting softness of Kemble, as more germane to "the weakness and the melancholy" of Hamlet. "Did you not speak to it?" (To Horatio.) Not only personally put to Horatio, for this must certainly be done, with emphasis or without, (as the others had said they did not speak to the spectre, and had invited Horatio, that he might do so,) but emphatically and tenderly, as inferring from the peculiar intimacy between them, that he surely had ventured to enquire the cause of so awful a visitation. Mr. Steevens, from a pique which Mr. Kemble explained to me, thought fit to annoy him upon this innovation; and, without naming the object of his sarcasm, has left it in the margin of his Shakspeare. Be it remembered, (says that editor,) that the words are not, as lately pronounced on the stage, Did not you speak to it? but Did you not speak to it? How awkward will the innovated sense appear, if attempted to be produced from the passage as it really stands in the true copies! Did you not speak to it?" The emphasis, therefore, should most certainly rest on speak." Here is, in the first place, a misstatement. Mr. Kemble never did so speak; but always placed the pronoun you before the negative; and, as to the awkwardness, it may be more difficult to discover, than the critic was aware. Shakspeare, when putting a question very personally indeed, preserves this very arrangement. As thus to Banquo in Macbeth: "Do you not hope your children shall be kings?" Mr. Kemble, however, told me, that he had submitted this to Dr. Johnson in one of those calls upon him which Boswell has mentioned, and that the doctor said to him, "To be sure, sir,-You should be strongly marked. I told Garrick so, long since, but Davy never could see it." "And for my soul, what can it do to that, Garrick here, with great quickness, said, "What can it do to THAT?" There is, I think, more impression in Kemble's manner of putting it. In Garrick it was a truism asserted; in Kemble not merely asserted, but enjoyed. Having drawn his sword, to menace the friends who prevented him from following the Ghost, every Hamlet before Mr. 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 towards the spirit, and drooped the weapon after him--a 57 change both tasteful and judicious. As a defence against such a being it was ridiculous to present the point.-To retain it unconsciously showed how completely he was absorbed by the dreadful mystery he was exploring. The kneeling at the descent of the Ghost was censured as a trick. I suppose merely because it had not been done before; but it suitably marked the filial reverence of Hamlet, and the solemnity of the engagement he had contracted. Henderson saw it, and adopted it immediately,—I remember he was applauded for doing so. These two great actors agreed in the seeming intention of particular disclosure to Horatio "Yes, but there is, Horatio,-and much offence 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?" In the scene with Polonius, where Hamlet is asked what is the matter which he reads, and he answers, "Slanders, sir," Mr. Kemble, to give the stronger impression of his wildness, tore the leaf out of the book. Even this was remarked, for he was of consequence enough, at first, to have every thing he did minutely examined. A critic observed, that, in the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he was not only familiar, but gay and smiling; and that he should be quite the reverse, because he tells them that he has lost all his mirth," &c. This was pure misapprehension in the critic. The scene itself ever so slightly read would have set him right. Hamlet, from playing on Polonius, turns to receive gaily and with smiles his excellent friends, his good lads, who are neither the button on fortune's cap, nor the soles of her shoe. And it is only when the conception crosses him that they were sent to sound him, that he changes his manner, puts his questions eagerly and importunately, and, having an eye upon them, gives that account of his disposition, which rendered it but a sleeveless errand which they came upon. Amid the dry cavils of criticism, let me indulge myself in saying, that such a piece of exquisite prose, as this very account, never was written even by Shakspeare himself. However lofty the conceptions, the expression is never turgid; and the reader may remark what care the Poet has taken to preserve it in a state of pure prose, for it never touches upon the measures of his verse. Let him compare H the Moralists of Shaftesbury, for instance, and he will find there, wherever the writer strains after the sublime, the language seems inclined to become blank verse if it could. The passage from Shakspeare I will here insert. "I have of late, (but wherefore I know not,) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises: and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a steril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me." Bishop Warburton finely observes upon the above-❝ This is an admirable description of a rooted melancholy, sprung from thickness of blood; and artfully imagined to hide the true cause of his disorder from the penetration of these two friends, who were set over him as spies." After this digression, I proceed with the points in Mr. Kemble's performance of Hamlet. « The mobled queen.” Garrick repeated this after the player, as in doubt: Kemble, as in sympathy. And accordingly Polonius echoes his approbation; and says, that the expression is good. "Mobled queen is good." "Perchance to dream!" Kemble prolonged the word dream meditatingly. Just after to Ophelia, he spoke the word lisp with one-lithp. A refinement below him. Henderson and he concurred, in saying to Horatio, "Aye in my heart of heart, as I do thee." Garrick gave it differently: "heart of heart." But I think would have attained his purpose better by changing his emphasis to "heart of heart," as I remember somewhere, I think in Thomson, "And all the life of life is gone;" that is, I cherish thee in the divinest particle of the heart, which is to that organ itself what the heart is to the body. It |