s chiefly lies, in tragedy or in comedy?"

"In both," said the Great Actor.

"You excel then," we continued, "in neither the one nor the other?"

"Not at all," he answered, "I excel in each of them."

"Excuse us," we said, "we haven't made our meaning quite clear. What we
meant to say is, stated very simply, that you do not consider yourself
better in either of them than in the other?"

"Not at all," said the Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid
gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time
throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from
his leonine forehead. "Not at all. I do better in both of them. My
genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time."

"Ah," we said, as a light broke in upon us, "then that, we presume, is
the reason why you are about to appear in Shakespeare?"

The Great Actor frowned.

"I would rather put it," he said, "that Shakespeare is about to appear
in me."

"Of course, of course," we murmured, ashamed of our own stupidity.

"I appear," went on the Great Actor, "in _Hamlet_. I expect to present,
I may say, an entirely new Hamlet."

"A new Hamlet!" we exclaimed, fascinated. "A new Hamlet! Is such a thing
possible?"

"Entirely," said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine head forward
again. "I have devoted years of study to the part. The whole conception
of the part of Hamlet has been wrong."

We sat stunned.

"All actors hitherto," continued the Great Actor, "or rather, I should
say, all so-called actors--I mean all those who tried to act before
me--have been entirely mistaken in their presentation. They have
presented Hamlet as dressed in black velvet."

"Yes, yes," we interjected, "in black velvet, yes!"

"Very good. The thing is absurd," continued the Great Actor, as he
reached down two or three heavy volumes from the shelf beside him. "Have
you ever studied the Elizabethan era?"

"The which?" we asked modestly.

"The Elizabethan era?"

We were silent.

"Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?"

We hung our head.

"If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly
ridiculous. In Shakespeare's day--as I could prove in a moment if you
had the intelligence to understand it--there was no such thing as black
velvet. It didn't exist."

"And how then," we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet delighted, "do
_you_ present Hamlet?"

"In _brown_ velvet," said the Great Actor.

"Great Heavens," we e