“Seeing an announcement to the effect that ‘Hamlet’ is in preparation at the Princess’s Theatre, set me thinking a bit about the matter; and I give in a free and unstudied manner the fruits of my thoughts. First, I wondered if one out of ten who’d read the bills would know anything really about either the play or the poet? Of the difference between the Hamlet of the first edition, of 1623, and that, say of Knight’s, of 1843. Open the two at random, and Ophelia says in the first, in Actus Secundus, Scena Secunda:―― ‘O, what a noble minde is here o’re-throwne? The Courtiers, Soldiers, Schollers, Eye, tongue, sword.’ In Knight’s the like words occur, only slightly altered in spelling; and in the ordinary acting edition the lines run:―― O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown! The expectancy and rose of the fair state.’ Let us look at this Prince, almost a fairy one, thirty years of age, too good for the earth, not good enough for Heaven. You know what he says: ‘What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?’ Well, instead of being thin as in the picture, and fancy he is; by his mother’s, the queen’s, words, ‘He’s fat, and scant of breath. Heere’s a napkin, rub thy browes, the Queen carowses to thy fortune, Hamlet.’ Of course it’s very well to wriggle and say oh, that, like the ‘beard,’ was put in to suit Burbage. Even letting this be the case, Shakespeare studied an actor more than the reputation of his first work. Then he is so poetical and wanting in action, so unable to grapple with the wicked things of this world. Oh! is he. When the king ships him to Britain, he puts the names of his false friends where his own stood, so that the British king has them beheaded and not Hamlet. Now for the Queen, and Laertes, and the King. Of a sudden, like acted upon by a magician’s wand, they turn bad all at once. It even worries and bothers Hamlet. He can’t understand why his mother should have taken so queer a fancy as to prefer his uncle to his far handsomer father. And Laertes who gives such nice advice to his sister, and for his cad-like conduct receives a very proper rebuke from her, turns from a seemingly-virtuous young gentleman to a mean and despicable assassin. And Ophelia, that beauteous and correct damsel, is easily made to act as a spy upon her lover. And this without one word of caution to him, or the least expression of regret for such, at the mildest, unlady-like, unwoman-like, and altogether unchristian-like conduct. Other minor faults and absurdities occur, as Hamlet’s remark after he had seen his father’s spirit:―― ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.’