ACTORS OF HAMLET. Hamlet may justly be called one of those beings who "resolves and re-resolves, yet dies the same." Some analytical and instructive notices of the character may be found in the following literary works, viz. : Schlegel's Lectures. Goethe's Wilhelmeister's Apprenticeship. Boaden's Life of John P. Kemble. I have become fully convinced of the truth of what Schlegel says of the character of Hamlet, viz. "Many of his traits are too nice and too delicate for the stage, and can only be seized by a great actor and understood by an acute audience." A critic, contemporary with Garrick, remarks:"Among the requisites for a perfect delineation of this difficult character are-the ease of a gentleman, the dignity of a prince, symmetry of features, expression of countenance, and flexibility of voice -to give proper variety to the vehement passions, weight to the declamation, and poignancy to the spirited and satirical parts-joined with originality and sound judgment." Among the various performers of any pretension to eminence in the character of Hamlet, whom I remember in my youth, the earliest was THOMAS A. COOPER, From 1816 to 1818, at the Park Theatre, New York. Mr. Cooper was noted, at that time, for a handsome face and a commanding and an Apollo-like figure, and his Hamlet was a favorite and particularly attractive with the public;—indeed, he was generally popular in many if not most of the characters wherein John Philip Kemble had become famous upon the London stage, and Mr. Cooper was said to have modelled his own after the style of that great actor, with which he had become familiar in his youth, and prior to his first visit, his early marriage into one of the first families at New York, and his subsequent life-long residence in the United States.* After the death of George Frederick *Mr. Cooper married Miss Mary Fairlie, a daughter of Major Fairlie, of the American Revolution; and Mr. Cooper's daughter Cooke, in 1812, and until the first advent of Mr. Wallack, in 1818, and of Edmund Kean, in 1820, Mr. Cooper was the only theatrical star in our Western hemisphere, and New York had-and continued to have until 1824-only the Park Theatre. I was too young when I first saw Mr. Cooper's Hamlet and had too vague a conception of the character to criticise that performance; though I well remember that his voice was full and of considerable compass, and his articulation was very distinct; his eyes, which were of a pale blue, and habitually -perhaps owing to near-sightedness-somewhat contracted, were not effective in his art, and his countenance had little flexibility; his gestures were usually formal and sometimes stiff, and the carriage of his body was generally heavy and sluggish, and occasionally, in action or movement, clumsy and ungraceful; his style was cold and declamatory, and sometimes turgid or bombastic; yet, in some other parts, and particularly in Shakespeare's Mark Antony, and as Brutus, in J. Howard Payne's adaptation of The Fall of Tarquin, and also in Sheridan Knowles's Virginius, and his Damon, when Mr. Cooper first performed the latter characters, and yet retained enough of his natural impulse to break Priscilla, who had been favorably received by the public as an actress, left the stage to become the wife of Mr. Robert Tyler, a son of ex-President John Tyler. |