ote A: One sees in Voltaire (who observed that "Hamlet" "appears
the work of a drunken savage") the old-fashioned tendency to belittle
Shakespeare. This tendency has one of its most amusing reflections in
a criticism by Hume, who said of the great poet that "a reasonable
propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold."]

Smile as we may over that frigid elegance, it seemed none the less
impressive in the days of auld lang syne, and even yet we hear echoes
of the play in a round of familiar quotations.

"The woman who deliberates is lost;"

And

"'Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it;"

And

"Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country."

still fall lightly on our ear. But the tragedy is forgotten, and why
seek to resurrect those once-beloved characters? Cato, Marcia, Juba,
and the rest--figures of classic marble rather than of flesh and
blood--have all gone to that bourne whence no stage travellers return.
They lie buried 'mid all the pomp of mouldering books, and there let
them peacefully decay.

CHAPTER VI

IN TRAGIC PATHS

The average comedian will whisper, if you are fortunate enough to get
him in confidential mood, that he was really designed by nature to
tread the stately walks of tragedy; that had not cruel fate intervened
he would now be enthralling the town with his Hamlet, Macbeth, or
Othello, and that even yet he has not lost all hope of adorning the
kingdom of Melpomene. But he is not to be believed, in at least
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and while we listen politely to
his story of blasted ambition our hearts are exceeding thankful that
the chance he looked for never came.

Nance Oldfield brilliantly reversed this order of things. Although she
shone in comedy with the brighter light, she could play serious roles
with majesty and power, and feel, or pretend to feel, a trifle bored
in so doing. "I hate to have a page dragging my train about," she used
to cry, with a pout of the pretty mouth; "why don't they give Porter
those parts? She can put on a better tragedy face than I can." Yet
whatever might be the undoubted capabilities of Porter for assuming
the tragic mask, audience and manager sometimes insisted that Nance
should banish all the sunlight and becloud her features with the
sorrows of a high-strung heroine.

One of these heroines was Andromache, the title personage of "The
Distressed Mother," an adapta