_Oph._ He took me by the wrist, and held me hard Then goes he to the length of all his arm; And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face, As he would draw it: long staid he so; At last, a little shaking of my arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound, As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being. That done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn’d, He seem’d to find his way without his eyes; For out of doors he went without their help, And to the last bended their light on me.’ _Act. II. Scene 1._ How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter’s cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia’s death begins thus: ‘There is a willow hanging o’er a brook, That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.’— Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear ‘hoary’ in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or absent, before the mind’s eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence:—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring, where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ How fine to make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own character, and to make her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her! She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, ‘It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ What other poet would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the person in whose name it is given. His