CHAP. V.

Mr. Kemble's first appearance in London.-Hamlet.-Preeminence of the character.-Cast of the play.--Originality of his Hamlet.-Compared with Garrick and Henderson.-Mr. Steevens's petulance.-Misstatement of a passage.-Dr. Johnson with Mr. Kemble.-The exclamation upon man.— Points in Mr. Kemble's Hamlet continued.—Hamlet's Ghost.-Why he is drest in armour.--Pneumatology of Shakspeare's age.-Garrick's alteration of Hamlet.

IT was on Tuesday, the 30th of September, 1783, that Mr. Kemble made his first appearance at Drury-lane theatre, in the character of Hamlet. The bills announced the play as originally written by Shakspeare; by which it was to be understood no more, than that it was not the miserable alteration of the play, which had so discredited the taste and judgment of Garrick. There were, notwithstanding, then, (and they continue) many important omissions, which the length of what is given alone can sanction: some of the passages absolutely essential to the conduct of the story; all of them to the full development of Hamlet's most interesting and singular character.

Hamlet has been more critically considered than any other of Shakspeare's dramas, and the Prince of Denmark has, in his personal character, afforded a constant theme for moral investigation. But although he is decidedly the great favourite of our countrymen, much pains have been taken to show, that their affection is misplaced, and that Hamlet is vicious and immoral, and consequently unworthy of that sympathy which has attended him from the time that Slakspeare exhibited him upon the stage to the present hour. Upon a hint from Dr. Akenside, Mr. Steevens has pronounced his conduct "every way unnatural and indefensible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whose intellects were in some degree impaired." It may readily be conceived, that such an opinion would never pass without contradiction; and a more highly philosophical and charitable decision has resolved all his seeming guilt into the really amiable irresolution of his nature.

I mention this dispute, to show the great attention that had been excited to the character; that in an age of commentary every line had been critically considered; and that,

though youth might choose the part from the aid it really lends to the actor, yet it required a very "learned spirit of human dealing," a sound judgment, and all the other requisites of the art, to obtain for the performer, in that day, any marked and distinguished admiration.

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I remember speaking once with Mr. Kemble upon the question agitated among the critics, whether Othello or Macbeth were our poet's greatest production. "The critics," said he, may settle that point among them; they will decide only "for themselves. As to the people. notice this, Mr. Boaden: "take up any Shakspeare you will, from the first collection "of his works to the last, which has been read, and look what "play bears the most obvious signs of perusal. My life for "it, they will be found in the volume which contains the "play of Hamlet." I dare say, in my time, some hundred copies have been inspected by me; but this test has never failed in a single instance.

The actor, therefore, who on the previous reputation of learning and diligence, excited notice and challenged criticism, had every possible difficulty to contend with: if he agreed with his predecessors and contemporaries, it would be said that he wanted originality; if he differed essentially, in either conception or execution, he was open to the charge of selfsufficiency and presumption. To extricate him in some degree from this dilemma, and to dispose the audience favourably towards him, there was some influence to be used, and it no doubt was employed with considerable success. Mrs. Siddons had, with becoming zeal, prepared her friends to welcome her elder brother; and as she had herself acted repeatedly with him, there could be no reasonable doubt of the opinion she expressed of his talents. I am not sure that the inadequate exhibition of Othello by Stephen Kemble the week before at Covent Garden, did any harm to his brother. It was,

to be sure, awkward to find a foil in his own family, but the incident seemed to turn itself into a joke against the manager of the rival theatre, who had engaged the big, instead of the great Kemble.

The cast of the play had nothing peculiar in it. Kemble took the performers of the other parts as he found them. Bensley was the Ghost-Farren the Horatio-Baddely the Polonius-Barrymore the Laertes. Packer had been so long the excellent or vicious monarch of the stage, that he was never deposed. By a very striking anticipation, Mrs. Hopkins performed his mother; and Miss Field was the representative of Ophelia. Parsons was the grave-digger of the bill only; being indisposed, Suett, who had before shovelled

in dust" for him at York, attended him on this occasion. I notice this last circumstance to show the malignity of one of his critics in the papers; who, finding his Hamlet full of faults, yet gave to Parsons his most decided approbation. This gentleman thus proved his power of seeing, what was invisible to every perception but his own, or rather of writing from the play-bill without visiting the theatre.

On Mr. Kemble's first appearance before the spectators, the general exclamation was, "How very like his sister!" and there was a very striking resemblance. His person seemed to be finely formed, and his manners princely; but on his brow hung the weight of "some intolerable wo." Apart from the expression called up by the situation of Hamlet, there struck me to be in him a peculiar and personal fitness for tragedy. What others assumed, seemed to be inherent in Kemble. "Native, and to the manner born," he looked an abstraction, if I may so say, of the characteristics of tragedy.

The first great point of remark was, that his Hamlet was decidedly original. He had seen no great actor whom he could have copied. His style was formed by his own taste or judgment, or rather grew out of the peculiar properties of his person and his intellectual habits. He was of a solemn and deliberate temperament-his walk was always slow. and his expression of countenance contemplative-his utterance rather tardy for the most part, but always finely articulate, and in common parlance seemed to proceed rather from organization than voice.

It was soon found that the critic by profession had to examine the performance of a most acute critic. To the general conception of the character I remember but one objection; that the deportment was too scrupulously graceful; but, besides that Hamlet is represented by the poet as "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," I incline to think the critic's standard was too low, rather than Kemble's too high; the manners were not too refined for such a person as Mr. Kemble's.

There were points in the dialogue in almost every scene which called upon the critic, where the young actor indulged his own sense of the meaning; and these were to be referred to the text or context, in Shakspeare, and also to the previous manner of Garrick's delivery, or the existing one of Henderson's. The enemies of Kemble, that is, the injudicious friends of other actors, called those points NEW READINGS; which became accordingly a term of reproach among the unthinking. The really judicious, without positively deciding. admitted the ingenuity and praised the diligence of the young

artist. They freely confessed, that there might be endless varieties in the representation of such a character; justifiable, too, by very plausible reasonings; and congratulated themselves and the public upon a new and original actor, whose performances, at all events, would never disgust them by common place, but would at all times tend to make Shakspeare better known, by the necessity for his being more studied; that the reference must be perpetual from the actor to the works; and in thus contributing to the fame of the poet, the performer might eventually establish his own.

A pretty extensive list of such points is before me, noticed by myself and by others, where Mr. Kemble differed from Garrick or Henderson, or both. I am therefore quite sure that I do not attribute to the beginning of his career, what I only noticed in the progress. The points too are curious in themselves, and merit to be here preserved; besides, that criticism unexemplified is as fruitless as metaphysics where the terms are not defined. We must have the passage literally before us, to know what we talk about. The first objection was to an emphasis. He was instructed to say,

"'Tis an un-weeded garden that grows to seed."

But Mr. Kemble thought, and justly, that "unweeded" was quite as intelligible with the usual and proper accent as the improper one; and besides, that the exquisite modulation of the poet's verse should not be jolted out of its music, for the sake of giving a more pointed explanation of a word already sufficiently understood.

"Sir, my good FRIEND! I'll change that name with you."

Thus Mr. Kemble, upon Horatio's saying to Hamlet that he was his poor servant ever. Dr. Johnson conceives it to mean, "I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend." In which case the emphasis would rest thus:

"Sir, my good FRIEND! I'll change that name with you."

Perhaps it may be rather, "Change the term servant into that of friend. Consider us, without regard to rank, as friends." Henderson, evidently so understood it, for he said,

"I'll change that name with you.

It was, I think, a novelty, when, after having recognized Horatio and Marcellus by name, Mr. Kemble turned cour

teously towards Bernardo, and applied the "Good even, sir," to him. The commentators were too busy in debating whether it should be evening or morning, to bestow a thought as to the direction of this gentle salutation.

It was observed how keenly Kemble inserted an insinuation of the King's intemperance, when he said to Horatio and the rest,

"We'll teach you to DRINK deep,-ere you depart."

He restored, with the modern editors of Shakspeare, "Dearest foe," and "Beteeme the winds of Heaven;" and he was greatly censured for doing so, because, as the first term is unknown to the moderns in the sense of most important, or, as Johnson thought direst, and the word beteeme not known at all, the critic said, it might show reading so to speak them, but did not show clear meaning; a thing of more moment to a popular assembly. This is a question, I am sensible, on which a great deal may be said; but let it be observed, that it involves the integrity of a poet's text. For the present, let it rest.

"My father,―methinks I see my father."

Professor Richardson terms this "the most solemn and striking apostrophe that ever poet invented." Mr. Kemble seemed so to consider it :-the image entirely possessed his imagination; and accordingly, after attempting to pronounce his panegyric

"He was a man, take him for all in all,"

a flood of tenderness came over him, and it was with tears he uttered,

"I shall not look upon his like again."

I know the almost stoical firmness with which others declaim this passage; and the political opposition affected, between the terms KING and MAN; but I must be excused, if I prefer the melting softness of Kemble, as more germane to "the weakness and the melancholy" of Hamlet.

"Did you not speak to it?" (To Horatio.)

Not only personally put to Horatio, for this must certainly be done, with emphasis or without, (as the others had said