So in Coriolanus, he exhibits the ruling passion with the same continued firmness, he preserves the same haughty dignity of demeanour, the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of temper throughout. He is swayed by a single impulse. His tenaciousness of purpose is only irritated by opposition: he turns neither to the right nor to the left: but the vehemence with which he moves forward increases every instant, till it hurries him to the catastrophe. In Leontes, in the Winter’s Tale, the growing jealousy of the king, and the exclusive possession which it at length obtains of his mind, are marked in the finest manner, particularly where he exclaims— ‘Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career Of laughter with a sigh, a note infallible Of breaking honesty? horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? Hours minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing? Why then the world and all that’s in ‘t is nothing. The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing, My wife is nothing, if this be nothing.’ In the course of this enumeration every proof tells harder, his conviction becomes more rivetted at every step of his progress, and at the end his mind is wound up to a frenzy of despair. In such characters, Mr. Kemble has no occasion to call in the resources of invention, or the tricks of the art; his excellence consists entirely in the increasing intensity with which he dwells on a given feeling or enforces a predominant passion. In Hamlet, on the contrary, Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails from a want of flexibility, or of that quick sensibility, which yields to every motive, and is borne away with every breath of fancy, which is distracted by the multiplicity of its reflections, and lost in its own purposes. There is a perpetual undulation of feeling in the character of Hamlet (though it must be confessed, much of this, which is the essence of the play, is left out on the stage), but in Mr. Kemble’s acting ‘there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.’ He plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating strait line, which is as remote from the natural grace and easy susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts to produce an effect, which Mr. Kean introduces into it. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet is, in our opinion, as much too ‘splenetic and rash,’ as Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and formal. In Richard, Mr. Kemble has not that tempest and whirlwind of the passions, that life and spirit, and dazzling rapidity of motion, which, as it were, fills the stage, and burns in every part, which Mr. Kean displayed in it till he was worn out by the managers. Mr.