are to judge of her endearments and her returns
of love.

The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days of
Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the greatest
ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one
of their reasons. But for the character itself, we find it in a play,
and therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic representation.
The play itself abounds in maxims and reflections beyond any other,
and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle for conveying moral
instruction. But Hamlet himself--what does he suffer meanwhile by
being dragged forth as a public schoolmaster, to give lectures to the
crowd! Why, nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions
between himself and his moral sense, they are the effusions of his
solitary musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most
sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth; or rather, they are the
silent meditations with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to _words_
for the sake of the reader, who must else remain ignorant of what is
passing there. These profound sorrows, these light-and-noise-abhorring
ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and
chambers, how can they be represented by a gesticulating actor, who
comes and mouths them out before an audience, making four hundred
people his confidants at once? I say not that it is the fault of the
actor so to do; he must pronounce them _ore rotundo_, he must
accompany them with his eye, he must insinuate them into his auditory
by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. _He must be
thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all
the while the spectators are judging of it._ And this is the way to
represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet.

It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity of
thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who otherwise
would never earn it for themselves by reading, and the intellectual
acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable; but
I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet
is made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the wonders
which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must
have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a character
came within the province of his art. Those who tell me of him, speak
of his eye, of the ma