Page 84 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

STAGE-HISTOR Y lxxvii

players costumed in the conventional plumes, trains, and
other signs of tragedy, Hamlet himself in a full-bottomed
wig, and the play cut for performance very much as it
had been in the time of Betterton.
A little oddity of 1736 may help to turn our eyes in
the direction they must now take, away from the three
legitimate playhouses to the unlicensed Goodman's
Fields. On February 9 of that year, with Giffard play-
ing Hamlet, Woodward as 'Ostrick' and Pinkethman
clowning it as the First Gravedigger, there was intro-
duced 'the Ceremony of Hamlet's Lying in State after
the Manner of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham.
With new music proper to the occasion, set by Mr Carey,
words by Henry Saville, Esq.'—a topical variation from
the sort of musical, scenic and choreographical enter-
tainment then regularly tacked on to the tragedy. Nearly
six years later, on December 9,1741, Giffard was again
acting Hamlet at Goodman's Fields, with Miss Hippis-
hy as his Ophelia, and for the Ghost David Garrick.-
(He was to play that part again twenty-seven years later
on his own stage of Drury Lane, for Palmer's benefit.)
In August, 1742, Garrick was acting Hamlet in Dublin,
with Mrs Woffington for his Ophelia; and in November
he made his first appearance in the part at Drury Lane.
Mrs Clive was his Ophelia; Mrs Pritchard the Queen,
Havard Horatio, Delane the Ghost, Hallam Laertes,
Taswell Polonius, and Macklin the First Gravedigger.
In that, his first season, he acted the part some thirteen
times. Hamlet was always one of his most popular
successes; and though he resigned the part now and then
to Spranger Barry,.to Holland, to Smith, or to Sheridan,
he played it himself every season throughout his career.
His last appearance in it was on May 30, 1776, when
he gave the performance in aid of the Theatrical Fund
on the eve of his retirement.
From the writings of Thomas Davies and of Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, a German who was deeply