histrionic art to embody and represent it to an audience; still, as I claim no infallibility of judgment, I hold my senses ever open to conviction, and am pleased rather than offended whenever a critic will take any reasonable exception to my own understanding, or will specify his objections to my personation of Falstaff. By a critic, I mean one who at least remembers each of the plays wherein Shakespeare has introduced Falstaff. I have made the character a practical study the greater portion of my professional life, and feel ready to maintain my conception with the poet's text and its most obvious interpretation.

Every trait of my representation, described by "The Times," I contend for, and I am gratified in discovering that I succeeded in depicting each so clearly. The specific character of Falstaff's humor changes with the circumstances. When Poins has hidden Falstaff's horse behind the hedge, and by such practical joke has compelled old Fat Jack to clamber Gadshill on foot, Falstaff is said to "fret like a gummed velvet;" he also fumes out a long soliloquy of splenetic invective, ending with “ I

hate it!"

The "Times" critic charges that I look upon Falstaff as "more seriously irascible than he is usually considered." I would submit whether Falstaff would not be in earnest when Poins confesses the trick he had put upon him, and shelters himself behind the Prince to escape punishment, in saying—

"Now, can not I strike him if I were to be hanged;" and also, whether it was not Poins's agility or the Prince's personal interference, or the urgency of their predatory expedition, which prevented Falstaff from "striking him."

In Falstaff's abuse of the hostess, and when backbiting the Prince, he interjects—

"The Prince! He is a Jack! a sneak-cup! and if he were here and were to say so, I'd cudgel him like a dog !"

In fact, the Second Part of Henry IV., and the Merry Wives of Windsor, too, furnish many instances of Falstaff's habitual recourse to his "cudgel," and of the indulgence of his "irascible" humors. Is not Falstaff "touchy ?" Mark! When Bardolph, encouraged to become familiar with him, ventures a jest confirming Falstaff's own report of his condition-" Now, I live out of all order, and out of all compass," and remarks, "Why, Sir John, you are so fat you must needs be out of all compass!" Falstaff proves himself "touchy," because Bardolph finds cause to qualify his observation immediately by adding, "out of all reasonable compass" yet, it does not restrain an immediate display of Falstaff's "cynical temperament," for which Bardolph's face and appearance furnish a subject.

I contend that there should be "marked, a strong contrast between" the heartiness of Falstaff's mirth according to circumstances; for example, when he is cornered into his wit's end, to escape detection in

the lies which he has just told the Prince and Poins, and swears—

"I knew ye, as well as he that made ye!"

the exigency of the occasion (to "hide himself from the open and apparent shame") and a forced mirth ought to be discernible in the acting-in order to characterize it distinctly from the unctuous kind, and wherever it is the spontaneous and the irresistible ebullition of his own exuberant fancy; as, for example, when he is surveying in soliloquy and luxuriating upon the features of his own ragged regiment.

That Falstaff feels "the infirmity of age already weighing upon him," may be proved from various expressions of his at different times; says he"There live not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old!" thus insinuating that there exist but two; one of course being his king, and the other himself, that king's loyal subject.

Respecting Falstaff's "mental as well as bodily obesity," which the "Times" critic also discovers in my rendering on the stage, the Prince tells him, when Falstaff inquires the "time of the day, "Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack," &c., &c.

Extract from The Times, London, June 27, 1851.

"Mr. Hackett, the American comedian, who

favors us with visits at very long intervals, comes back to us with precisely the same qualities which he displayed years ago. There is probably not a more conscientious actor on the stage. He has evidently studied the speeches of the fat knight, whether uttered in Henry IV. or The Merry Wives of Windsor, with a carefulness worthy of a commentator on Sophocles. He has a definite manner of giving every phrase, and of introducing every jest. The finest mosaic work could not be more carefully laid down. And there is not only care, but considerable intelligence evinced in the rendering. The mind of an acute artist has evidently been devoted to a character, with the view of dig. ging everything out of its hidden recesses, and making of it the completest thing in the world. And yet there is one deficiency, which prevents the Falstaff from producing its full effect on the audience. This is, the want of the ars celare artem; you approve of the result at which the artist has arrived, but you always see the pains he takes to reach it."

Remark.

If this critic, in the subtlety of his penetration, could find but "one deficiency" in my making my Falstaff "the completest thing in the world," and that deficiency, too, such a one as none but the most unsophisticated of spectators could fail to

detect to be, after all, no more than acting, or stageart, and intended, by "an acute artist," to only represent naturally an imaginary character, under the particular circumstances of his varying scenes, I can't ask nor expect more from "The Times" newspaper-ever notorious for its parsimony of praise and its liberality of censure: the rule of that press being never to compliment any body or action without a "but," or some qualifying reservation. The dignity of its policy on every subject and in every department forbids that its editor can be fallible in judgment, or ever surprised or instructed on any occasion.

JAMES H. HACKETT.

SKETCH OF JAMES H. HACKETT.

BY CHARLES J. FOSTER.

Chief Justice. What's he that goes there?
Attendant. Falstaff, an't please your lordship.

IT has often been said that though the triumphs of the actor are immediate, they are not lasting. The fruition of his efforts is quickly gathered; he hears the thunder of applauding multitudes while he is yet upon the stage, but it is as brief as it is boisterous and intoxicating. It confers no enduring fame like that which, ripening slowly, rewards the author, the painter, the sculptor, and the statesman,