We would give much to know how Shakespeare recorded in his diary the first performance of _Hamlet_, the most fascinating of all his works. He himself, we are credibly told, played the Ghost. We would give much for a record of the feelings which lay on the first production of the play beneath the breast of the silent apparition in the first scene which twice crossed the stage and affrighted Marcellus, Horatio, and the guards on the platform before the castle of Elsinore. No piece of literature that ever came from human pen or brain is more closely packed with fruit of the imaginative study of human life than is Shakespeare's tragedy of _Hamlet_; and while the author acted the part of the Ghost in the play's initial representation in the theatre, he was watching the revelation of his pregnant message for the first time to the external world. When the author in his weird role of Hamlet's murdered father opened his lips for the first time, we might almost imagine that in the words "pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold," he was reflecting the author's personal interest in the proceedings of that memorable afternoon.[5] We can imagine Shakespeare, as he saw the audience responding to his grave appeal, giving with a growing confidence, the subsequent words, which he repeated while he moved to the centre of the platform-stage, and turned to face the whole house:-- I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this. [Footnote 5: Performances of plays in Shakespeare's time always took place in the afternoon.] As the Ghost vanished and the air rang mysteriously with his piercing words "Remember me," we would like to imagine the whole intelligence of Elizabethan England responding to that cry as it sprang on its first utterance in the theatre from the great dramatist's own lips. Since that memorable day, at any rate, the whole intelligence of the world has responded to that cry with all Hamlet's ecstasy, and with but a single modification of the phraseology:-- Remember thee! Ay, thou _great soul_, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. III