And again: "Being done (i. e., resolved on) there is no pause” (in deed).

The expression of contained energy in his movement, the large, low-toned, vibrant rumination of his voice, sounding like thought overheard, filled the scene with an atmosphere at once oppressive and fascinating.

"I know not where is that Promethean heat,"

as if the adjective had just occurred to him; and accompanied by a wandering and questioning gesture.

We feel a certain shame in picking out items for comment from scenes of profound or exalted passion, like this one we have in view; and especially as the excellence of Mr. Booth's acting could not be measured by the number of good points he made, but by the entireness of identification. Yet we find no help for it. Observe the eastern imagery employed throughout this scene. The chaste stars; the " error of the moon; "the Arabian trees; ""the base ; the huge eclipse of sun and moon ; " and that big imagination of the world as

Indian

"

"One entire and perfect chrysolite."

The deed is done. Emilia enters :

"O good my lord, yonder 's foul murder done."

Othello. "It is the very error of the moon;

She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.'

His gesture seemed to figure the faith of the Chaldean, and to bring the moon more near. "Roderigo killed!" (with wonder). "And Cassio killed!" (glutting the words in his throat).

O, I were damned beneath all depth in hell,
But that I did proceed, upon just grounds,

To this extremity."

He uttered that first tremendous line with burning intensity. Milton has borrowed the thought, and put it into the mouth of Satan

"And in the lowest depth, a lower deep," etc.

After the truth is out, and under the spell of his grand presence, and in the tragic continuity of the scene, his speech over his dead wife seemed the ultimate reach of blended grief and love and wild remorseful passion of which the human voice is capable.

"Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!" Othello has wounded Iago, but not killed him. He says:

"I am not sorry neither: I'd have thee-live;
For in my sense, 'tis happiness to die.'

now recall that passage in the Second

"If it were now to die

'Twere now to be most happy."

Then, the expression came from the absolute fullness of his joy; now, the same word tells of the last bitterness of his grief and self-condemnation :

"The wheel has come full circle.”

From this moment his own death is assured. At the summons, "Bring him away," and as he is beginning his final speech

"Soft you; a word or two before you go,"

he takes a silken robe, and carelessly throws it over his shoulder; then reaches for his turban, possessing himself of a dagger he had concealed therein.

"Then must you speak

Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well,

Of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe.'

He uttered the word "pearl" as if it were indeed the immediate jewel of his soul," his wife, with a lingering fullness and tenderness of emphasis, and with a gesture as if, in

the act of throwing it away, he cast his own life from him.

If the excellence of a performance may be judged by its effect on the audience, this one had transcendant merit. Let the hushed attention of a company unusually numerous and refined let the silent tears of strong men, carried by the imaginative stress of the scene beyond the reaches of their critical culture bear witness. For ourself, we went no more to the play during that engagement; but walked about as in a voluntary dream, not caring to dispel by attendance on even his other performances, the pathetic illusion he had created.

MACBETH.

AMONG those undefined influences which stream from the greater dramas of Shakespeare may be numbered the climate of the play; and this, while often eluding the observation, tells surely upon the feeling of the reader. From tropical heat, we pass to the chill mists of Scotland. From the alternate languor and fierceness of passion — from imagination which rides upon the current of the blood, and revels in gorgeous color and in rich and sensuous forms, we pass to that higher imagination, which allies itself to the intellectual and spiritual nature; in a word, from the atmosphere of Othello to the atmosphere of Macbeth.

The ductile flame of Mr. Booth's histrionic genius passed into this northern form with even greater readiness and radiance than into Othello. The supernatural element in Macbeth is more pervading and various in its working than in Hamlet. The character is more closely knit; the action more peremp