One of the conditions under which our friend had gone upon the stage was not acceded to by Serlo without some limitations. Wilhelm had required that _Hamlet_ should be played entire and unmutilated: the other had agreed to this strange stipulation, in so far as it was _possible_. On this point they had many a contest; for as to what was possible or not possible, and what parts of the piece could be omitted without mutilating it, the two were of very different opinions. Wilhelm was still in that happy season when one cannot understand how, in the woman one loves, in the writer one honors, there should be anything defective. The feeling they excite in us is so entire, so accordant with itself, that we cannot help attributing the same perfect harmony to the objects themselves. Serlo again was willing to discriminate, perhaps too willing: his acute understanding could usually discern in any work of art nothing but a more or less _im_perfect whole. He thought that, as pieces usually stood, there was little reason to be chary about meddling with them; that of course Shakespeare, and particularly _Hamlet_, would need to suffer much curtailment. But, when Serlo talked of separating the wheat from the chaff, Wilhelm would not hear of it. “It is not chaff and wheat together,” said he: “it is a trunk with boughs, twigs, leaves, buds, blossoms, and fruit. Is not the one there with the others, and by means of them?” To which Serlo would reply that people did not bring a whole tree upon the table; that the artist was required to present his guests with silver apples in platters of silver. They exhausted their invention in similitudes, and their opinions seemed still farther to diverge. Our friend was on the borders of despair when on one occasion, after much debating, Serlo counseled him to take the simple plan,--to make a brief resolution, to grasp his pen, to peruse the tragedy; dashing out whatever would not answer, compressing several personages into one: and if he was not skilled in such proceedings, or had not heart enough for going through with them, he might leave the task to him, the manager, who would engage to make short work with it. “That is not our bargain,” answered Wilhelm. “How can you, with all your taste, show so much levity?”