me."

_Act II. Scene 1._

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered
melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut,
and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult
to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to
study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's death begins thus:

"There is a willow hanging o'er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream."----

Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is as
true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact, white
underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear "hoary" in the
reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the same
faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or absent,
before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra, when
conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence:--"He's
speaking now, or murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile?" How fine to
make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own character, and to make
her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her! She says,
after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another
fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since
my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet would have
thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have dared
to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might have
happened in fact.--That which, perhaps, more than any thing else
distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others, is
this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each of his
characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest,
as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of
the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with
the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to another,
like the same soul successively animating different bodies. By an art like
that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and
makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the person in whose
name it is given. His plays alone are properly expressions of the
passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of
flesh and blood; they speak like m