“Heaven keep me from all such curtailments!” answered Wilhelm; “they destroy at once the sense and the effect. What these two persons are and do it is impossible to represent by one. In such small matters we discover Shakespeare’s greatness. These soft approaches, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity,--how can they be expressed by a single man? There ought to be at least a dozen of these people, if they could be had; for it is only in society that they are anything; they are society itself; and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them. Besides, I need them as a couple that may be contrasted with the single, noble, excellent Horatio....” * * * * * Though in this remolding of _Hamlet_ many characters had been cut off, a sufficient number of them still remained,--a number which the company was scarcely adequate to meet. “If this is the way of it,” said Serlo, “our prompter himself must issue from his den, and mount the stage, and become a personage like one of us....” * * * * * “The very man!” exclaimed our friend, “the very man! What a fortunate discovery! We have now the proper hand for delivering the passage of ‘The rugged Pyrrhus.’” “One requires your eagerness,” said Serlo, “before he can employ every object in the use it was meant for.” “In truth,” said Wilhelm, “I was very much afraid we should be obliged to leave this passage out: the omission would have lamed the whole play.” “Well! That is what I cannot understand,” observed Aurelia. “I hope you will erelong be of my opinion,” answered Wilhelm. “Shakespeare has introduced these traveling players with a double purpose. The person who recites the death of Priam with such feeling, in the _first_ place, makes a deep impression on the prince himself; he sharpens the conscience of the wavering youth: and, accordingly, this scene becomes a prelude to that other, where, in the _second_ place, the little play produces such effect upon the King. Hamlet sees himself reproved and put to shame by the player, who feels so deep a sympathy in foreign and fictitious woes; and the thought of making an experiment upon the conscience of his stepfather is in consequence suggested to him. What a royal monologue is that which ends the second act! How charming it will be to speak it!”