the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, protected against the eager and the nipping air of the night by a fur cap and collar, and with mittens and arctic overshoes, over the traditional costume of Hamlet; to see the woful melancholy of his face as he spoke the most absurd of lines; to watch the horror expressed upon his countenance when the Ghost appeared; to hear his familiar conversation with that Ghost, and his untraditional profanity when commanded by the Ghost to "swear"--all expressed, now in the style of Fechter, now of Studley, now of Booth--was as thoroughly and ridiculously enjoyable as any piece of acting our stage has seen since Burton and Mitchell were at their funniest, so many years before. He was startling in his recommendation of a brewery as a place of refuge for Ophelia, and in the church-yard his "business" was new and quite original, particularly the apostrophe to the skull of Yorick, who, he seemed to think, was laughing now on the wrong side of his face. Fox was one of the earliest Hamlets to realize that the skull even of a jester, when it has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years, is not a pleasant object to touch or smell, although very interesting in itself to point a moral, or for its association's sake; and the expression of his face, as he threw the skull of the dead jester at the quick head of the First Grave-digger, was more suggestive to the close observer of the base uses to which we may all return than any "Alas, poor Yorick!" ever uttered. [Illustration: STUART ROBSON AS CAPTAIN CROSSTREE.] _Hamlet_ at the Olympic was played for ten consecutive weeks. The general cast was not particularly strong or remarkable, except in the Ophelia of Miss Belle Howett. She was serious, and surprisingly effective in the mad scene, and often the superior of many of the representatives of Ophelia in the original tragedy, who unwittingly have burlesqued what the burlesque actress, perhaps as unwittingly, played conscientiously and well. The travesty of _Hamlet_ by Mr. Fox is dwelt upon particularly here as being in many respects one of the best the American stage has ever seen, and as giving the present writer an opportunity of paying just tribute to the memory of an actor who, like so many of his professional brethren, was never properly appreciated during his life, and who never before--not even in William Winter's usually complete _Brief Chronicles_--has received more than a passing notice in the long records of the stage he did so much to adorn.