It was perhaps because Charlotte Cushman was more or less lacking in womanly charm and because she was possessed of more or less masculine characteristics, that her Hamlet seems to have been more successful, or, at least, less unsuccessful than that of any other woman. Nor was Hamlet the only one of Shakspere’s male characters that she undertook in the course of her long and honorable career in the United States and in Great Britain. Altho she was an incomparable Katherine in ‘Henry VIII,’ dowering the discarded Queen with poignant pathos, she undertook more than once the part of Cardinal Wolsey, which does not present itself as the kind of a character likely to be attractive to a woman. From all the accounts that have come down to us, she appears to have impersonated Romeo more satisfactorily than either Wolsey or Hamlet. In fact, one competent critic, who had seen her in all her greatest parts, including Lady Macbeth and Meg Merrilies, selected as her highest peak of achievement the moment when Romeo inflamed by the death of Mercutio provokes Tybalt in a fiery outburst: Now, Tybalt, take the villain back, That late thou gav’st me! Shakspere would not in all probability be long displeased to see Ophelia and Queen Katherine and Juliet impersonated by women, however much he might be annoyed by the vain efforts of any woman to assume the masculinity of Hamlet and Wolsey and Romeo. His tragedies are of imagination all compact, and he might very well wish to have them treated with all possible respect. But perhaps he would not insist on taking his comedies quite so seriously; and therefore he might have been amused rather than aggrieved if he could have seen the performance of ‘As You Like It’ given by the Professional Woman’s League at Palmer’s Theater in November, 1893, when every part in the piece was entrusted to a woman. III Here was a complete turning of the tables, a triumphant assertion of woman’s right to do all that becomes a man. When the comedy had been originally produced at the Globe Theater in London (probably in 1600 but possibly a year or two earlier) no actresses had ever been seen on the English stage; and therefore Rosalind and Celia and Audrey had to be entrusted to three shaven lads whom the older actors had taken as apprentices. When the comedy was performed at Palmer’s Theater in New York in 1893, almost three centuries later, Orlando and Adam, Touchstone and Jaques were undertaken by actresses of a maturer age and of a richer experience than the Elizabethan boys could ever have acquired.