Page 82 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

S T A G E - H I S T O R Y kxv

express rage and fury, and the house has thundered with
applause, though the misguided actor was all the while
(as Shakespeare terms it) tearing a passion into rags.'
Aaron Hill in The Prompter for October 24,1735, said
very much the same. Wilks rushed at the Ghost much
too soon, with precipitate clamour, 'hurrying on the
whole [scene with] Smartness and Alacrity.' He threat-
ened the Ghost, and turned his sword against it, not
against those who were trying to hold him back (it was
not by such means that Betterton's Hamlet had frightened
Booth's Ghost). In the scene with Ophelia he was too light
and airy all through, with no sign of sadness even when
she was not observing him. On the other hand, in the
Play-scene he showed an 'unforced, soft, becoming
Negligence.' Thomas Davies differed from Hill on
certain points. He thought that Wilks acted the scene
with Ophelia like a lover and a gentleman, and the
Closet-scene with warm indignation, tempered with
the most affecting tenderness; and, while regretting
Wilks's restlessness, he commended the pleasing melan-
choly of countenance and grave despondency of action
with which he spoke the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy.
To Wilks's credit it must be added that (as Professor
Odell has discovered) he restored to the stage the advice
to the players; and his acting cannot fail to have had
some share in the steady popularity of the tragedy.
In January, 1708, when the once more united com-
panies appeared at Drury Lane, Hamlet, with Wilks
as the Prince, was the opening play. On that occasion
Booth played the Ghost;, Mills, Horatio; Powell,
Laertes;. Johnson, Polonius; Cibber, Osric; Estcourt,
the First Gravedigger; Mrs Knight, the Queen; and
Mrs Mountfort, Ophelia. During the rule of Cibber
and his partners at Drury Lane, 1710-33, Hamlet
was given every year except two; and. Wilks went on
playing the Prince as late as February, 1732, the month
in which he died. In the earlier part of that period the