pected guests, and saw that she looked very well in it.

She would not go out at all this day. When she had deemed that it was all over, and that she should never see him again, she had been most wisely patient, most bravely determined on doing just as she had ever done. But this sudden revulsion, this relighting of the torch of hope, upset her philosophy, and though she resolved to meet and greet him as a friend,— nothing more, never anything more,-still till the time of such meeting came she could but let agitation reign supreme.

It was a long dull morning that Theo passed in the drawing-room of their lodgings. It Iwould have been better for her had she gone to the Admiralty with her father, as he had invited her to do; but she had refused this slight diversion, fearing that three o'clock would come upon her like a thief in the night, and that they would come and go and miss her, and make no further attempt. Such a cata

strophe was of too horrible a nature to be lightly brought upon herself, therefore she suffered her papa to go off to a possible interview with the First Lord alone.

It was not a hopeful room to contemplate, with the prospect before you of spending several hours in it by yourself, that drawing-room in the house in Great George Street. Everything

in it was for show and not for use, and the show was not fair to look upon. There was an undesirable carpet on the floor, a dark-green ground with branches of red trees strewed all over it, and those branches stood out so well from the green that one involuntarily stepped high in order to avoid catching in and tripping over them; there were papier mâché stands sprinkled with a lavish hand about the apartment, and these supported busts of Byron and Scott and Shakespeare (the latter with an evident predisposition to water on the brain), and glass shades full of wax fruit and flowers. The chairs, too, were of an order from which one would turn with loathing and disgust when fatigued mentally or bodily, for they were heavy hot velvet; and if one deposited one's self upon one of them with anything like velocity, clouds of dust arose and rendered all things obscure for many minutes. When to this is added the fact, that the French clock on the mantel-piece was addicted to loud ticking, and being always an hour too slow or four hours too fast by reason of its purposeless minute perpetually catching in a feeble kind of way its stumpy hour-hand, it will readily be believed that the room was not hopeful-that it was, on the contrary, decidedly disheartening. It was not at all a room in a corner or portion of which Theo could enshrine herself

in

and becomingly await the arrival of possible devotees.

It never occurred to Theo to seek relief from the tedium by taking up woman's universal panacea, work. She was not one who could find partial oblivion in a thimble, and alleviation for much in the wielding of that useful little weapon, by aid of which many women keep ennui, even despair, at bay. The girl was far from being muscular or coarse in her tastes or appearance; still a needle never looked quite at home in her slender restless hand; she had no liking for the most customary of all feminine occupations.

Cut off, therefore, by habit from this resource; cut off by circumstances from others that were more congenial; Theo sat all the morning in idleness, and though Satan did not find some mischief for her idle hands to do, the fiend Imagination had a rare time of it, waved on by the recently relighted torch of Hope.

She had tutored herself into the belief that she should not be very impatient even if three o'clock passed and they came not. But the schooling was unnecessary, for with the striking of the hour mingled the sound of a resolutely plied knocker, and presently Mrs. Galton alone came into the room.

"I am very punctual, am I not?" Mrs. Galton asked, as she was shaking hands. "I always keep my word." And so, to do her justice, she did in some things; she never broke small promises to casual acquaintances; when Kate Galton ruptured a faith it was a fine big one invariably.

"It is very kind of you to have taken the trouble to find me out," Theo replied; her knees were trembling with excitement and disappointment, and, despite her efforts, her eyes rolled towards the door and rested there lingeringly. Kate Galton quite understood why they did so, and resolved to punish this folly lightly in some way or other. Theo Leigh conceiving a genuine passion for a man she (Kate) had elected to honour with an elastic regard, was a person to be abased when she had served the contemplated purpose.

"Ah, I see you looking; but little Katy is not with me, nor is my husband, for a marvel."

"Oh, I know that you did not bring your little girl up; I was not looking for her," Theo said honestly; and Mrs. Galton's brow clouded ever so slightly as she weighed the probabilities of Theo having heard thus much from Harold Ffrench.

"Have you seen my cousin, then, lately?"

she asked.

Theo shook her head and said "No." "Ah, I thought it was most extraordinarily

negligent of him, if he had seen you, not to have told me, knowing, as he does, how anxious I am to see a great deal of you while in town, and in the country too, I hope; but Harold is so forgetful that, after all, I ought not to have been surprised if it had escaped his memory."

This speech was designed to show Theo how absolutely unimportant a thing she was in Harold Ffrench's eyes, and also that Mrs. Galton's intercourse with her cousin was incessant and familiar. It failed in achieving the first object, for Theo did not believe that she was forgotten by or utterly unimportant to the man who had seemed to love her so warmly but the other day. But the latter and equally natural implication she firmly credited. Why should she have doubted it, indeed? It seemed to her to be in the order of things that Mrs. Galton and her cousin Harold should be much together. Theo had not begun to fear that there was either sin or shame in the combination, or to suspect it of being other than right, proper, highly desirable, and extremely natural.

"And what have you been doing?" Mrs. Galton asked, after a few desultory remarks that did not bear upon anything in particular, and shall therefore be suffered to pass unrecorded. "I suppose you have seen the principal things that are going on; isn't it a wonderful season?"

"It is my first experience of one; of course it is wonderful to me; but I am not in the vortex, you know."

"Ah, how should you be in the vortex with no chaperone save your papa ? I forgot that when I asked you what you had been doing. I have ebbed away from London society since my marriage, but I do know some people still, and it would give me great pleasure to take you wherever I go myself."

Theo thanked Mrs. Galton for the kindly disposition evinced, but it was all she could do, for she was beginning to develop the idea that a little more was said than was meant on all occasions. It is unpleasant to accept warmly a conditional invitation and then to discover that the inviter did not intend to go quite so far in the matter as you in your innocence imagined from the manner.

"It would really give me great pleasure to have you with me, Miss Leigh; do you think you could persuade your papa to leave you with me when he returns?"

Theo tried to say that she thought she ought to go home with papa " firmly, and she failed. The thought that she would surely see Harold Ffrench at his cousin's house would arise, and it caused her resolution to totter. Mrs. Galton felt persuaded of Theo's acquiescence in the proposed scheme, despite that

young lady's gentle indication of a wish to sacrifice inclination to duty; and Mrs. Galton fathomed the cause of this acquiescence, and again resented it in the innermost recesses of her mind.

"Little fool! to nurse hopes of Harold in such a way," Kate thought, even while she was saying :

"Let us leave the decision to your mamma I will write to her about it, and if she will trust you with me you need have no scruples about staying. Mr. Galton will be obliged to return to Haversham, but we shall never lack an escort with my cousin Mr. Ffrench in town. I do not like to think of your going back after only three weeks' experience of this exceptional year."

Theo glowed at the prospect.

“It is very kind of you, very kind indeed, to a stranger such as I am. I shall enjoy staying with you above everything, but it does seem a great thing for you to do for such a recent acquaintance."

"Not at all. I have no sisters, no cousins, no grown-up daughters" (she tinkled out a a little laugh here at the preposterousness of the notion of her having grown-up daughters). "Perhaps when Katy's of a fit and proper age to be given her chance, I shall be disinclined for society, and shall be glad of some friend doing for her what I am going to do for you." Then Kate rose up to go, and added, Mind, Miss Leigh, that you reward me by marrying brilliantly at the end of the season; my protégée's glories will be mine, remember."

"Papa, papa!" Theo cried, when her father came home from that interview with a suave First Lord, who made him happy even while refusing him all he asked," Mrs. Galton has asked me to stay with her; she's going to remain entirely on my account and take me everywhere, though Mr. Galton won't be able to,-that is to say, Mr. Ffrench will, you know, instead. Will you let me go?"

"I don't quite understand the case. When do you want to go to her?"

"Not while you can stay here with me, papa; not till you go back, dear; but then I thought-that is, she thought that you would let me go and stay with her and see a little more of what is going on; and she would take me to parties, she says."

"I know so little of the woman, and what I do know I don't like."

"That's mere prejudice, papa; she's the sweetest, kindest woman; I wish you could have seen her to-day, you wouldn't have been able to help liking her; even if you can't let me go to her, don't say a word against her, please."

"We will hear what your mother says,' Mr. Leigh said meditatively; he was in a difficulty-a difficulty that frequently oppresses parents. He could not bear to deprive the child of one jot or tittle of pleasure which might be hers. But at the same time he sorely distrusted this woman who was offering to give it to her.

(To be continued.)

THE STAGE HAMLET.

SOME people, misled by their love for the notion of Shakespeare's surpassing greatness, are unwilling to believe that he ever did anything as anybody else would do it. They forget that a great genius is always practical, adaptable, protean, universal; that it is only the small celebrity who is afraid to stir from one particular attitude, and prefers to stand solemnly aloof with folded arms, lest some doubt concerning his claim to consideration should arise-just as a man with an accidental rent in his garment hesitates about shifting his position for fear the disclosure of his misadventure should ensue. The small genius cannot afford to be common-place: the great can afford to be and to do anything.

However degrading and shocking many of his admirers may deem it, therefore, to Shakespeare, the shaping of his immortal words to suit them to the stage, the players, and the public of his time, was doubtless but a simple and natural sort of business. His genius, if hidden and repressed in one direction, revenged itself by bursting out more resplendently than ever in another. The poet had to please his time as well as himself; to put money in his pocket; to live to please that he might please to live. Is it likely he condescended to fret about these conditions of his life? Surely he was too supreme a philosopher. So, a new play being wanted, he took the measure of the company for the characters, as a tailor might jot down their bodily proportions, with a view to the providing for them new doublets and trunks; and when, with some notions in his head of a tragedy to be called "Hamlet," he, as it were, threw a tape round Mr. Burbadge, the leading actor of the period, and found him decidedly full about the region of the waist, he determined that his Prince of Denmark should be of corresponding contour, and "fat and scant of breath," needing the Queen's napkin to rub his moist brows with, after the exercise of fencing.

For Richard Burbadge was no doubt the actor who introduced "Hamlet" to the stage. Of his age when he did this there is some quesMr. Collier, who has diligently investi

tion.

gated this, as most other matters relating to Shakespeare and his times, conjectures that the player was born about 1567, or three years later than the poet whose heroes he personified. "Hamlet" was first performed in the winter of 1601 or the spring of 1602. Burbadge would be then in the vigour of life and at the height of his reputation. On the authority of Wright's "Historia Histrionica " (1699), it has been suggested that Joseph Taylor was the original Hamlet; but although Wright mentions Taylor as performing the part "incomparably well," he does not state that Taylor was its first representative. If, as Mr. Collier supposes, Taylor was not born until 1585, it is clear he was too young at the date of the production of the play to have sustained its chief character. Burbadge was hardly likely to have resigned so prominent and applauded a part to a mere tyro in the profession, as Taylor must have been then. Taylor may, however, in later years have played it as the "double" of the great actor, and on his death (in 1618) have become fully possessed of the part as a matter of right. The elegy on the death of Burbadge, printed by the Shakespeare Society from a manuscript in the possession of the late Mr. Heber, makes pointed reference to the actor's Hamlet, with a hint at his physical peculiarities.

No more young Hamlet, though but scant of breath,
Shall cry "Revenge!" for his dear father's death.
It may be noted too that the same poem
applies to the actor a complimentary appella-
tion which an after age fitted to David
Garrick :

England's great Roscius! for what ROSCIUS
Was unto Rome that Burbadge was to us!
How did his speech become him, and his pace
Suit with his speech, and every action grace
Them both alike, whilst not a word did fall
Without just weight to ballast it withal.
Had'st thou but spoke to Death, and used the power
Of thy enchanting tongue, at that first hour
Of his assault, he had let fall his dart,
And quite been charmed with thy all-charming art:
This Death well knew, and, to prevent this wrong,
He first made seizure on thy wondrous tongue;
Then on the rest; 'twas easy: by degrees
The slender ivy twines the hugest trees.

From the mention made here of the manner of his death, it has been inferred that Burbadge was stricken fatally with paralysis, which in the first instance affected his speech. A further hint as to the actor's personal appearance may be gathered from the lines, Thy stature small, but every thought and mood Might throughly from thy face be understood. Tribute is paid to the high position of Burbadge by Ben Jonson in his "Bartholomew Fair;" and the passage containing this makes

Cokes. I thank you for that, Master Littlewit; a good jest! Which is your BURBADGE now? Lantern Leatherhead. What mean you by that, sir? Cokes. Your best actor, your FIELD.

...

The Roscius Anglicanus, a small octvao pamphlet written by Downes, prompter to the players who, after the Restoration, assembled at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, under Davenant's patent, contains a brief history of the stage from 1660 to 1706. But for this little work the world would know little of theatrical occurrences in the days of Charles and James the Second. "Hamlet "" was the first play of Shakespeare's acted at the Duke's Theatre, and it was one of Davenant's earliest productions. "Sir William Davenant," says Downes, "taught the players the representation of Hamlet,' as he had seen it before the Civil War. No succeeding tragedy for many years gained more money and reputation to the company than this." Mr. Betterton, the leading actor of the company, sustained the part of Hamlet, and his performance invariably attracted a large audience. Actors, it is well known, set much store upon the traditions of their predecessors, submitting to be governed in this respect by a sort of unwritten law. The fact that great A., in a past generation, in a particular part, did or said a certain thing in a certain way, is accounted a sufficient reason for little B. saying or doing the same thing in the same part at a later period. alleged that the received method of presenting the part of Hamlet was handed down to Mr. Betterton in a direct line from the poet. Mr. Betterton benefited by the instructions of Davenant, and Davenant spoke with the air of one having authority. As Mr. Downes the prompter says quaintly, "Mr. Betterton took every particle of Hamlet from Sir William Davenant, who had seen Mr. Taylor, who was taught by Mr. Shakespeare himself." Downes, of course, only wrote from hearsay, he knew nothing of himself about the matter. It is doubtful if Shakespeare, who died before Burbadge, taught Taylor how to play Hamlet; Taylor not being in complete possession of the part until the death of Burbadge. But Taylor had, of course, seen Burbadge play Hamlet often enough, and it is likely that Burbadge had the benefit of Shakespeare's instructions how the character should be presented, and Taylor, following Burbadge's manner pretty closely, enabled Davenant to give to Betterton, and so on to his successors, much of the original method of the first Hamlet.

It is

In 1671 a new theatre was built for the Duke's company in Salisbury Court, Fleet

the site having been part of the garden of the Earl of Dorset in Queen Elizabeth's time. Mr. Betterton's Hamlet still continued to attract the town, and about this time the character of Ophelia was sustained by Mrs. Betterton. The play, as performed, appears to have been most injudiciously abridged. The noble lines which follow

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! are omitted, and the actor continues immediately What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel? &c. The speech of the players is also left out.

His

Of the personal appearance of Betterton, Anthony Aston, who published a supplement to Cibber's "Life," gives a very disparaging account. The great actor is described as labouring under an ill figure, being clumsily made, with a large head, a bull neck, round shoulders, and short arms, which he seldom raised above his waist; he avoided much action, and had a way of lodging his left hand in his breast. His eyes were small, his face broad and scarred with the small-pox. He was corpulent, with thick legs and large feet. voice was "low and grumbling, yet he could tune it by an artful climax, which enforced universal attention even from the fops and orange girls." While it was often wished that he would resign the part of Hamlet to some younger actor, Mr. Aston acknowledges that no one else could have pleased the town so well:-" he was rooted in their opinion, he was the Phoenix of the stage, the most extensive actor, from Alcxander to Falstaff; if I was to write of him all day I should still remember fresh matter in his behalf."

Aston's criticism is not very flattering to the physical peculiarities of Betterton. Kneller's portrait of the great actor, however, which Cibber certifies to be "extremely like," exhibits a grand head, with handsome stronglymarked features, broad manly brow, and fine expressive eyes; altogether, putting away the cloud of curly wig which surrounds the head, a very admirable stage face. Cibber says that Betterton's person was suitable to his voice: more manly than sweet; that he was of the middle height, inclining to be corpulent, of a serious and penetrating aspect, his limbs of athletic form. "Yet," he winds up with, "however formed, there arose from the harmony of the whole, a commanding mien of majesty which the fairer faced, or, as Shakespeare calls them, the 'curled darlings' of his time, ever wanted something to be equal masters of."

Hamlet seems to have been Betterton's most esteemed performance, though Steele, in the Tatler (No. 167), lavishes extraordinary praise upon his Othello. It was his Hamlet, however, which induced Mr. Pepys to cry out ecstatically, "It's the best acted part ever done by mortal man." Mr. Booth, playing the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, confessed that he was so awed by the sight of the great actor's affected terror and amazement, that he could hardly proceed with his part. It had been customary with many Hamlets to indulge in much vociferation, to exhibit extreme rage and fury at the appearance of the shadow of the departed king. Mr. Addison once inquired why Hamlet should be in so violent a passion with the Ghost, which, though it might have astonished, clearly had not provoked him? Booth, playing the Ghost to Wilks's Hamlet, rebuked him for his needless vehemence: "I thought, Bob, you wanted to play at fisticuffs with me; you bullied where you ought to have revered." He then proceeded to explain how differently Betterton had played the part, adding enthusiastically, "But divinity hung round that man." To this Wilks replied, with a happy modesty, "that Mr. Betterton and Mr. Booth could always act as they pleased; but that, for his own poor part, he must be content to do as well as he could."

Cibber describes Betterton's manner of rendering this portion of the play: "He opened the scene with a pause of mute amazement, then rising slowly to a solemn trembling voice he made the Ghost equally terrible to the spectator as to himself, and in the descriptive part of the natural emotions which the ghastly vision gave him, the boldness of his expostula tion was still governed by decency and manly, but not braving; his voice never rising to that seeming outrage or wild defiance of what he naturally revered." What Betterton desired far more than the applause of his hearers was their attentive silence; he maintained that there were many ways of extorting loud expressions of pleasure from an audience, but that to keep them hushed and quiet was the result of truth and merit solely. From his first entrance upon the scene he took full possession of the esteem and regard of the house, seeming to seize upon the eyes and ears even of the most giddy and inadvertent. "To have talked or looked another way would then have been thought insensibility or ignorance. In all his soliloquies of moment, the strong intelligence of his attitude and aspect drew you into such an impatient gaze, that you almost imbibed the sentiment with your eye before the ear could reach it."

One critic notes that during Betterton's representation of Hamlet it had frequently

been noticed that the countenance of the actor, which was naturally ruddy and sanguine, in the scene of the third act where the Ghost appears, from the effect of sudden amazement and horror turned instantly as pale as his neckcloth, while his whole body was seized with an irrepressible trembling. The cunning of the scene was so strongly brought home to the audience, "that the blood seemed to shudder in their veins likewise, and they in some measure partook of the astonishment and horror with which they saw this excellent actor affected." In the Tatler (No. 74), September, 1709, we find Mr. Greenleaf addressing Mr. Bickerstaff on a performance of Hamlet: "Had you been to-night at the playhouse you would have seen the force of action in perfection; your admired Mr. Betterton behaved himself so well, that though now above seventy, he acted youth, and by the prevalent power of proper manner, gesture, and voice, appeared throughout the whole drama a young man of great expectation, vivacity, and enterprise. The soliloquy where he began the celebrated sentence of 'To be or not to be,'—the expostulation where he explains with his mother in her closet,-the noble ardour after seeing his father's ghost, and his generous distress for the death of Ophelia, are each of them circumstances which dwell strongly upon the minds of the audience, and would certainly affect their behaviour on any parallel occasion in their own lives."

After the death of Betterton, the part of Hamlet seems to have been generally sustained by Wilks, who, though an actor of grace and feeling rather than of force and intensity, seems to have given general satisfaction to his audience. No doubt, however, he was far beneath both Betterton who preceded him and Garrick who followed him in the part. Booth contented himself with the part of the Ghost, in which he gained extraordinary fame from his deep deliberate tones, his noiseless tread, and the solemnity of his demeanour. One of Booth's admirers stated that when present at a representation of "Hamlet" long after the actor's death, as soon as there had been mention of the Ghost, he felt a return of the peculiar awe and terror with which Booth's performance of the part had always inspired him; he was soon cured of this sensation, however, by the ghosts after Booth. Quin upon one occasion undertook the part, and endeavoured to imitate Booth's manner as closely as he well could.

Wilks acquired great fame by his recitation of the speech at the close of the third act, as indeed did Barry, whose noble figure and touching voice were of especial advantage