Page 97 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xc HAMLE T

to his father's spirit; but he convinced his audience that
he had indeed seen and talked with, a ghost and that he
could never be the same again. He wept at the death
of Polonius, pitied Ophelia without rancour, and was
tenderly affectionate with Horatio. But his gentleness by
no means implied dullness. He leapt into Ophelia's
grave with the best. He brought back all the wild and
whirling words after the Play which all others (even
Betterton, who had not been afraid of 'old mole' and
'truepenny') had left out, and after them he broke
down, with his head on Horatio's shoulder. And his
dignity and'.gentleness were broken by moments of
intense excitement. When Lady Pollock wrote to him in
1861 about Fechter's very quiet way of speaking the
close of the soliloquy which ends with 'The play's the
thing,' he replied that he 'conceived the excitement of
that most excitable being to be carried to its highest
pitch' at that point, and that therefore he 'must differ the
whole heaven' from Fechter. Among the many who
acted with him from time to time were Samuel Phelps as
the Ghost, Mrs Warner as the Queen, Harley and
Keeley as the First Gravedigger and Priscilla Horton as
Ophelia. In his regular version he cut out Fortinbras, the
Ambassadors, Reynaldo, the Dumb Show and all the
scene of the King's prayer, and ended the play on 'The
rest is silence.' When he took the play, with others, in
1845, to Paris, and acted it at the Tuileries before the
King and Queen, he cut out also the Gravediggers.
The Hamlet of Charles Kean appears to have been,
like most of his work, a respectable performance. He
aimed at steering between the classical and the romantic;
but, though he had never seen his father play the part,
he was too ranch his father's son not to lean towards the
romantic and to make more of certain moments than of
the whole. Such moments were his cry of 'Is it the
King?,' his speaking of 'O, what a rogue and peasant
slave am I!' which he gave in full, his demeanour during