Page 92 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

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

modesty, but put it in on the second of his twelve nights);
and this 'sensible, lonely Hamlet,' intense, introspective,
abstracted, was the first of a good many such visions of
the character. On his first appearance at Drury Lane,
September 30, 1783, he wore 'a modern Court dress of
rich black velvet, with a star on the breast, the garter and
pendant ribbon of an order—mourning sword and
buckler, with deep ruffles; the hair in powder; which
in the scenes of feigned distraction, flowed dishevelled in
front over the shoulders' (which is very much what
Barry's does in the Garrick Club picture). On that occa-
sion he had Bensley for the Ghost, Packer for the King,
Farren for Horatio, Suettfor the Gravedigger, Baddeley
for Polonius, Mrs Hopkins for the Queen, and Miss
Field for Ophelia.
After his triumphant first season he produced the play
fairly often, but irregularly. His mature view of it is
best considered from the productions at Covent Garden
in 1803 and onwards, for which he printed his version of
the play. Introspective and melancholy though he was,
it must be noticed that all the important cuts were made
in order to keep the action of the play going, not to
emphasize the principal part. Fortinbras (some of
whose final lines are given to Horatio), the Ambassadors,
Reynaldo, the Dumb Show, the King's prayer and
Hamlet's soliloquy about it, are clean gone, and so are
Polonius's advice to Laertes and the talk about the boy
players. The King's part is a good deal shortened; most
of the soliloquy, 'O, what a rogue and peasant slave am
I!,' most of the Queen's description of Ophelia's drown-
ing, and most of Hamlet's last two speeches to his mother
in the Closet-scene are cut out. Some of these cuts are
made, no doubt, to save time for the newly introduced
intervals between the setting of scenery, and some to
spare the delicacy which was now beginning to creep in
between the audience and the poet.
Only two can be held to throw light on his conception