Certain other parts of his Hamlet were unforgettable; his whirlwind of passion at the close of the play scene which, night after night, stirred the whole audience to frenzied cheers; the extraordinary way in which by speech and tone, action and time, he conveyed to his auditory the sense of complex and entangled thought and motive in his wild scene with Ophelia; his wonderment at the announcement of Horatio: “I think I saw him yester-night.” _Hamlet._ “Saw who?” _Horatio._ “My Lord, the King your Father.” _Hamlet._ “The King—my father?” And the effective way in which he conveyed his sense of difference of the subjective origin of the ghost at its second appearance at which Shakespeare hinted, following out Belleforest’s remark on the novel: “In those days, the northe parts of the worlde, living as then under Sathans lawes, were full of inchanters, so that there was not any young gentleman whatsoever that knew not something therein sufficient to serve his turne, if need required.... Hamlet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked spirite abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him (as he can) of things past.” _Of things past!_ Hamlet could know of things that had been though he could not read the future. This it was which was the essence of his patient acquiescence in the ways of time—half pagan fatalism, half Christian belief—as shown in that pearl amongst philosophical phrases: “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all.” IV _Hamlet_ was played ninety-eight nights on that first season. Four of them hang in my mind for very different reasons. The first was that wonderful opening night when the great audience all aflame with generous welcome and exalted by ready sympathy lifted us to unwonted heights. The second was on January 18, the eighteenth night of _Hamlet_. The Chinese Ambassador, the Marquis Tsêng, came to see the play and with him came Sir Halliday Macartney. After the third act the Ambassador and Sir Halliday Macartney came to see Irving in his dressing-room, where they stayed some time talking. It was interesting to note—Sir Halliday translated his remarks verbally—how accurately the Ambassador followed the play, which he had not read nor heard of. Where he failed was only on some small points of racial or theological difference. He seemed to be absolutely correct on the human side.