Page 89 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

kxxii H A M L E T

again as the other'?); and next to Johnson Yates was
liked as the First Gravedigger.
In December, 1772, after he had been acting and
staging Hamlet for more than thirty years, Garrick
produced his own version of the tragedy. Since his visits
to Paris on his tour of 1763-65 he had been more
sensitive than before to French opinion; and in spite of
his professed abhorrence of Voltaire, he seems to have
been pondering some of his strictures on Shakespeare,
and especially the very inaccurate account of Hamlet in
the Appel a toutes les nations de I'Europe des jugements
d'un icrivain anglais published in March, 1761. He
had also read the version by Ducis, which had been
staged in Paris in 1769, and which omitted the Ghost,
the players and the fencing-match. But there was
contemporary opinion in England also to encourage him
to what he afterwards called 'the most impudent thing I
ever did in all my life,' and 'rescue that noble play from
all the rubbish of the fifth Act.' He never printed his
version; and it survives only in the reports of others,*
which have been collected by Professor Odell {Shake-
speare from Betterton to Irving, i. 385-89). Garrick
made some minor alterations in the first three Acts; but
the greatest changes came later. The Gravediggers and
the funeral of Ophelia were left out. Hamlet did not go
to England, nor did Laertes plot with the King to murder
him. Hamlet and Laertes quarrelled in the King's
presence, and, on the King's intervening, Hamlet fought
and killed him. Laertes then wounded Hamlet mortally,
and, accordingto one account, himself died of his wounds;
according to another account Hamlet, dying, prevented
Horatio from avenging him and made Horatio and
Laertes take hands. The Queen went mad and died off
stage. Lichtenberg had known very well how the
English audiences loved the Gravediggers (he had seen
them at Covent Garden), and in his wordy, metaphysical
way had discerned the fitness of the scene with its 'raw