“Why, yes, sometimes. He was a man, not a god;--and no man’s work can be absolutely perfect. Shakespeare had his faults like everybody else, and with his great genius he would have been the first to own them. It is only your little mediocrities who are never wrong. Are you going also?” “Yes; I mean to damage your reputation as a prophet, and avoid the chance of an introduction to Miss Chester--for this evening, at any rate.” He laughed as he spoke, but El-Râmi said nothing. The two passed out of the stalls together into the lobby, where they had to wait a few minutes to get their hats and overcoats, the man in charge of the cloak-room having gone to cool his chronic thirst at the convenient “bar.” Vaughan made use of the enforced delay to light his cigar. “Did you think it a good _Hamlet_?” he asked his companion carelessly while thus occupied. “Excellent,” replied El-Râmi. “The leading actor has immense talent, and thoroughly appreciates the subtlety of the part he has to play;--but his supporters are all sticks,--hence the scenes drag where he himself is not in them. That is the worst of the ‘star’ system,--a system which is perfectly ruinous to histrionic art. Still--no matter how it is performed, _Hamlet_ is always interesting. Curiously inconsistent, too, but impressive.” “Inconsistent? How?” asked Vaughan, beginning to puff rings of smoke into the air, and to wonder impatiently how much longer the keeper of the cloak-room meant to stay absent from his post. “Oh, in many ways. Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency of the whole conception comes out in the great soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be.’” “Really?” and Vaughan became interested. “I thought that was considered one of the finest bits in the play.” “So it is. I am not speaking of the lines themselves, which are magnificent, but of their connection with Hamlet’s own character. Why does he talk of a ‘bourne from whence no traveller returns,’ when he has, or thinks he has, proof positive of the return of his own father in spiritual form;--and it is just concerning that return that he makes all the pother? Don’t you see inconsistency there?” “Of course,--but I never thought of it,” said Vaughan, staring. “I don’t believe any one but yourself has ever thought of it. It is quite unaccountable. He certainly does say ‘no traveller returns,’--and he says it after he has seen the ghost too.” “Yes,” went on El-Râmi, warming with his subject. “And he talks of the ‘dread of something after death,’ as if it were only a ‘dread,’ and not a fact;--whereas if he is to believe the spirit of his own father, which he declares is ‘an honest ghost,’ there is no possibility of doubt on the matter. Does not the mournful phantom say--