thing
could have been better when translated into life by Irving's genius.

The hair looked blue-black, like the plumage of a crow, the eyes
burning--two fires veiled as yet by melancholy. But the appearance of
the man was not single, straight or obvious, as it is when I describe
it--any more than his passions throughout the play were. I only remember
one moment when his intensity concentrated itself in a straightforward,
unmistakable emotion, without side-current or back-water. It was when he
said:

"The play's the thing
With which to catch the conscience of the King."

and, as the curtain came down, was seen to be writing madly on his
tablets against one of the pillars.

"Oh, God, that I were a writer!" I paraphrase Beatrice with all my
heart. Surely a _writer_ could not string words together about Henry
Irving's Hamlet and say _nothing, nothing_.

"We must start this play a living thing," he used to say at rehearsals,
and he worked until the skin grew tight over his face, until he became
livid with fatigue, yet still beautiful, to get the opening lines said
with individuality, suggestiveness, speed, and power.

_Bernardo:_ Who's there?

_Francisco:_ Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself.

_Bernardo:_ Long live the King!

_Francisco:_ Bernardo?

_Bernardo:_ He.

_Francisco:_ You come most carefully upon your hour.

_Bernardo:_ 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

_Francisco:_ For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold....

And all that he tried to make others do with these lines, he himself did
with every line of his own part. Every word lived.

Some said: "Oh, Irving only makes Hamlet a love poem!" They said that, I
suppose, because in the Nunnery scene with Ophelia he was the lover
above the prince and the poet. With what passionate longing his hands
hovered over Ophelia at her words:

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

His advice to the players was not advice. He did not speak it as an
actor. Nearly all Hamlets in that scene give away the fact that they are
actors, and not dilettanti of royal blood. Irving defined the way he
would have the players speak as an _order_, an instruction of the merit
of which he was regally sure. There was no patronizing flavor in his
acting here, not a touch of "I'll teach you how to do it." He was
swift--swift and simple--pausing for the right word now and again, as in
the p