“Mr. Furnivall is of opinion that the text of _Hamlet_ known to commentators as ‘The First Quarto,’ furnishes a far better and more compact acting play than the modern stage-version. He, and ‘a strong body of amateurs,’ essayed, on the afternoon of Saturday, the 16th April, at St. George’s Hall, to convert the public and the critics to their view of the case――apparently with indifferent success. Mr. FURNIVALL has sent to the _Daily News_, what he calls ‘a hasty try to set right’ the celebrated soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be,’ in the Quarto No. 1. Mr. FURNIVALL’S version is, of course, a thing of beauty; yet is it hardly so jerky, creaky, spasmodic, incoherent, scansion-proof,――in short, so Utter, as in the interests of the Bard might be desired. Here, therefore, is ‘a hasty try to set right’ Mr. FURNIVALL himself.” To be or not to be? There you are, don’tcherknow! To die, to sleep! is that all? Forty winks? To sleep, to dream! Ah, that’s about the size of it! For from that forty winks when we awake In the undiscovered cotton-nightcap country From which no passenger ever took a return-ticket―――― Why――ah, yes――humph!――exactly――very much so! Who, but for what the vulgar call “blue funk,” Would bear the rough and tumble of the world, Be down’d on by the rich, plagued by the poor, Married by widows, and by orphans worried? Who’d bear April’s east wind or June’s perpetual rain, The Income-tax, Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL’S questions, Middlesex Magistrates, Mud-Salad Market, Crass commentaries on Shakespearian quartos. And all earth’s ills, from FURNIVALL to toothache, When that himself he might his gruel give In half a jiffy? _Who_’d put up with it, But for the thought of worse things turning up In the Micawber Limbo――By-and-by? Quite so! ’Tis bother, doubt, hope, fear, cant, gush. The fads of noodles and of nincompoops, Fogging the brain and flooring common sense, Which make us grin and bear the ills we have Rather than, _à la_ FURNIVALL, to make “A hasty try to set ’em right.” Ah, yes, ’Tis noodledom makes cowards of us all!!! Mr. F. J. Furnivall’s fussy and hasty “tries to set everybody right” about all that relates to Shakespeare are well-known, as is also his objection to any contradiction of his favorite theories.