guous
features,--these temporary deformities in the character. They make
him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his
gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; they make
him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's
father,--contempt in its very grossest and most hateful form; but
they get applause by it: it is natural, people say; that is, the
words are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can
judge of: but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never think
of asking.

So to Ophelia.--All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, rant and rave
at her as if she had committed some great crime, and the audience are
highly pleased, because the words of the part are satirical, and they
are enforced by the strongest expression of satirical indignation of
which the face and voice are capable. But then, whether Hamlet is
likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved
so dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, that in all such deep
affections as had subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a
stock of _supererogatory love_, (if I may venture to use the
expression,) which in any great grief of heart, especially where that
which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of
indulgence upon the grieved party to express itself, even to its
heart's dearest object, in the language of a temporary alienation;
but it is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so it
always makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but
grief assuming the appearance of anger,--love awkwardly
counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown:
but such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is
no counterfeit, but the real face of absolute aversion,--of
irreconcilable alienation. It may be said he puts on the madman; but
then he should only so far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own
real distraction will give him leave; that is, incompletely,
imperfectly; not in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of
his art, or as Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry
players."

I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which
Shakspeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to
differ from that which the audience receive from those of other
writers; and, _they being in themselves essentially so different from
all others_, I must conclude that there is some