times. Why is it hard to perform? Because the drunkard and the madman have thoughts, actions, opinions, conceits, and movements quite different from the every day persons that we meet in real life. They have, as it were, a world of their own. Judgment then (not taste-for taste and judgment are two perfectly distinct things) and true histrionic talent are absolutely necessary in personating either of these characters.

Now make the madness of Hamlet real, and you take away from him an excelling merit in the character. Make it assumed, and you give him this merit. But what are the facts (and as I am an unworthy follower of the Bar, I shall prove perverse and say, I must have facts) I say where are the FACTS which tell us that the madness of Hamlet is real? I have read the play over and over again to try and discover these said important facts, but I must confess unto the mad manufacturers of poor Hamlet that I could not even get a single tenable one which would hold good in any court of justice in His Britannic (or even Danish) Majesty's dominions-even though I got my sharpest wits and keenest Dollond spectacles to assist me in the search, backed too by a formal writ of" De lunatico inquirendo."

What is almost the first expression of Hamlet to Horatio and Marcellus? Let us bring it into

court.

Come here;

How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself

As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on

That you never shall note, that you know aught
Of me.

Yet again

Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore: your hands; you are welcome :-but my uncle-father, and my aunt-mother are deceived.

And again

It is not madness

That I have uttered: bring me to the test

And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.

It is not my intention to bring up any more extracts than these few lines from this play.. I consider even these, perfectly sufficient to establish the proposition which I have laid down; and I feel I would be but wasting both my time and my ink (and like Cowper's inkstand it is almost dried in the sun) were I to waste either, in attempting to establish a self-evident proposition." I how

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ever do not want to prove an unfair antagonist. If any literary lady or gentleman" should choose to enter the lists with me, (for I know, many entertain the opinion,) I can pledge myself to them, that I shall endeavour to answer their arguments by more copious extracts, and more pressing proofs, should they favour me with any reply to this essay. Let me now return to Hamlet and his " fair Ophelia."

Hamlet was possessed of both taste and judgment. His remarks to the players confirm the first his demeanor to the king and queen, the last. I know scarcely any thing which evinces so much taste, so much nice discrimination, such delicacy of conception, as his "advice to the players." (Oh! would that it were better attended to now-a-days.) In this, is set down the every precept which a finished actor should require; and so difficult is it for one man to unite in himself all the requisites which are there so nicely put forth, that only one man has been able to come up to, and obey them all; for there was no shade of character, either in tragedy or comedy that he could not perform.

I said that the love addresses of Hamlet to Ophelia were slightly touched, but done with a master's hand. I think the following excessively

beautiful, and greatly admire the ease with which he turns from the depth and morality of his soliloquy, to the beautiful form which crosses his sight.

Soft you, now!

The fair Ophelia :-nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Oph. Good, my Lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thank you; well.

The reader of taste will perceive the soft and suasive expressions in the first lines. He will further allow me to call his attention to the word

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humbly," and the slight hesitation or pause, (the actor who does not see this, leaves out a beauty,) before the word “well.” Put any other word in the place of "humbly," and though it may express the politesse of Hamlet, it cannot give it the half mad, half sensible turn, which that single word conveys; and which it was Hamlet's intention to convey to his interesting interlocutor. As another instance of what I am speaking of, I adduce the Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

This, if possible, is more masterly than the former; though I have often endeavoured to drill into the thick pates of many of my companions where the beauty in it lay, which they would fain

affirm was gross and irrelevant. Shall I endeavour to explain where the judgment of this line lies? and I do fervently pray if I have got any aforesaid thick-pated animal reading my book, that he will even forthwith (but good humouredly) put it by.

The company are all assembled to see the play performed which Hamlet gets up for the purpose of "touching the conscience of the king." Here there is need of his utmost discretion and judgment, for the purpose of carrying on the plot of his assumed madness. If he addressed Ophelia untowardly and rudely, he would forsake his character both of courtier and gentleman. If he addressed her without some mixture of waywardness, he could not carry on his design. He therefore prefaces the blunt and amorous question in the above line, by the complimentary words of

No, good mother; here's metal more attractive. and then he immediately turns to his fair interlocutor, and says,

Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

There is inimitable propriety in both these lines." The last is a difficult line to speak correctly. I shall here remark to the reader, that I once heard a gentleman (in a drawing-room,) change this.