times, was peculiar; his enunciation was frequently so rapid that it became unintelligible; he hurried through some of the finest passages at a gallop, and lost some of the finest points; but his Hamlet as a whole was impressive and magnetic, the oftener seen the better liked. Mr. Fechter made his first appearance in America as Ruy Blas at Niblo's Garden, New York, on the 10th of January, 1870, under the management of Jarrett & Palmer; and he played Hamlet for the first time on the 15th of February the same year. [Illustration: HENRY E. JOHNSTONE.] Among the purely exotic Hamlets of the New York stage Salvini, Bandmann, Bogumil-Dawison, Rossi, Barnay, and Hasse have been the most prominent. But while the performance of each was excellent in its own fashion, each labored under the great disadvantage of playing a most familiar part (and in a play decidedly an English classic) in a foreign tongue. It is not possible, of course, in the limits of a single chapter to speak at any length of all the hundreds of Hamlets who have appeared upon the New York stage between the years 1761 and 1861, or to refer to the scores of men who have played the part in other cities. The following alphabetical list of those who have been seen upon the metropolitan stage is compiled from Mr. Ireland's _Records_, and from many files of old play-bills in various collections, and is felt to be fairly complete. It does not include the tragedians whose performances have been noticed elsewhere in the text of the present chapter, or those who have played Hamlet in other cities of the Union but not in New York; and the date appended is that of the player's first recorded appearance in the part here: William Abbott, April 9, 1836; Augustus A. Addams, November 13, 1835; J. R. Anderson, September 3, 1844; George J. Arnold, 1854; Mr. Barton, March 9, 1831; Mr. Bartow, May 26, 1815; John Wilkes Booth, March, 1861; Frederick Brown, March 9, 1819; McKean Buchanan, June 10, 1850; Samuel Butler, November 4, 1841; John H. Clarke, November 8, 1822; Mr. Clason, November 10, 1824; G. F. Cooke (not the great George Frederick), October 4, 1839; Mr. Dunbar, December, 1813; Edward Eddy, August 27, 1852; Henry I. Finn, September 12, 1820; W. C. Forbes, May 29, 1833; Richard Graham, October 29, 1850; H. P. Grattan, May 11, 1843; James H. Hackett, October 21, 1840; Charles Carroll Hicks, December 13, 1858; Henry Erskine Johnstone, December, 1837; William Horace Keppell, November 17, 1831; H. Loraine, December 23, 1856; W. Marshall, February 3, 1848; J. A. J. Neafie, 1856; John R. Oxley, August 16, 1836; William Pelby, January 6, 1827; Charles Dibdin Pitt, November 8, 1847; J. B. Roberts, May 17, 1847; John R. Scott, March, 1836; James Stark, September, 1852; John Vandenhoff, October 2, 1837; Henry Wallack, September 4, 1824; James William Wallack, Jr., July, 1844; Wilmarth Waller, June 30, 1851. [Illustration: JOHN VANDENHOFF.]