[Footnote A: One sees in Voltaire (who observed that "Hamlet" "appears the work of a drunken savage") the old-fashioned tendency to belittle Shakespeare. This tendency has one of its most amusing reflections in a criticism by Hume, who said of the great poet that "a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold."] Smile as we may over that frigid elegance, it seemed none the less impressive in the days of auld lang syne, and even yet we hear echoes of the play in a round of familiar quotations. "The woman who deliberates is lost;" And "'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it;" And "Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country." still fall lightly on our ear. But the tragedy is forgotten, and why seek to resurrect those once-beloved characters? Cato, Marcia, Juba, and the rest--figures of classic marble rather than of flesh and blood--have all gone to that bourne whence no stage travellers return. They lie buried 'mid all the pomp of mouldering books, and there let them peacefully decay. CHAPTER VI IN TRAGIC PATHS The average comedian will whisper, if you are fortunate enough to get him in confidential mood, that he was really designed by nature to tread the stately walks of tragedy; that had not cruel fate intervened he would now be enthralling the town with his Hamlet, Macbeth, or Othello, and that even yet he has not lost all hope of adorning the kingdom of Melpomene. But he is not to be believed, in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and while we listen politely to his story of blasted ambition our hearts are exceeding thankful that the chance he looked for never came. Nance Oldfield brilliantly reversed this order of things. Although she shone in comedy with the brighter light, she could play serious rôles with majesty and power, and feel, or pretend to feel, a trifle bored in so doing. "I hate to have a page dragging my train about," she used to cry, with a pout of the pretty mouth; "why don't they give Porter those parts? She can put on a better tragedy face than I can." Yet whatever might be the undoubted capabilities of Porter for assuming the tragic mask, audience and manager sometimes insisted that Nance should banish all the sunlight and becloud her features with the sorrows of a high-strung heroine. One of these heroines was Andromache, the title personage of "The Distressed Mother," an adaptation by Ambrose Philips of Racine's "Andromaque." This play seems heavy enough if we bother to read it now, but it had a thousand charms for theatre-goers in the days when Mr. Philips frequented Button's coffee-house and there hung up a cane which he threatened to use upon the body of the great Mr. Pope.[A] Addison, whom tradition credits with writing the entertaining epilogue, took all manner of interest in the tragedy, and the _Spectator_ treated it to an advance notice which we degenerates might term an unblushing "boom."