was
almost provocative of laughter--rightly so, for such emotional
indignation has its funny as well as its terrible aspect. The mad, and
all are mad who have, as Socrates put it, "a divine release from the
common ways of men," may speak ludicrously, even when they speak the
truth.

All great acting has a certain strain of extravagance which the
imitators catch hold of and give us the eccentric body without the
sublime soul.

From the first I saw this extravagance, this bizarrerie in Henry
Irving's acting. I noticed, too, its infinite variety. In "Hamlet,"
during the first scene with Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo, he began by
being very absent and distant. He exchanged greetings sweetly and
gently, but he was the visionary. His feet might be on the ground, but
his head was towards the stars "where the eternal are." Years later he
said to me of another actor in "Hamlet": "_He_ would never have seen the
ghost." Well, there was never any doubt that Henry Irving saw it, and
it was through his acting in the Horatio scene that he made us sure.

As a bad actor befogs Shakespeare's meaning, so a good actor illuminates
it. Bit by bit as Horatio talks, Hamlet comes back into the world. He is
still out of it when he says:

"My father! Methinks I see my father."

But the dreamer becomes attentive, sharp as a needle, with the words:

"For God's love, let me hear."

Irving's face, as he listened to Horatio's tale, blazed with
intelligence. He cross-examined the men with keenness and authority. His
mental deductions as they answered were clearly shown. With "I would I
had been there" the cloud of unseen witnesses with whom he had before
been communing again descended. For a second or two Horatio and the rest
did not exist for him.... So onward to the crowning couplet:

"... foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes."

After having been very quiet and rapid, very discreet, he pronounced
these lines in a loud, clear voice, dragged out every syllable as if
there never could be an end to his horror and his rage.

I had been familiar with the scene from my childhood--I had studied it;
I had heard from my father how Macready acted in it, and now I found
that I had a _fool_ of an idea of it! That's the advantage of study,
good people, who go to see Shakespeare acted. It makes you know
sometimes what is being done, and what you never dreamed would be done
when you read the scene