any rate,
get a greater or different pleasure from it than they would have had if
instead of the Shakespearean dialogue they had been offered the blank
verse of any ordinary respectable writer.

Why should it be otherwise? Why should the hundreds of people in the
sixpenny gallery understand the conduct of Hamlet, which has puzzled the
most learned and acute critics of all countries for centuries? A person
hearing the play on the stage, and otherwise unacquainted with it, must
be bewildered. How is he to understand why Hamlet is so rude to Ophelia,
yet later on declares that he loved her prodigiously? What is he to
think of a Hamlet who takes so much trouble to find out whether his
uncle is guilty, and then tamely submits to be sent out of the country
by him, leaving his father unavenged? What opinion is he to form of the
perfectly idiotic, complex conspiracy between the King and Laertes to
get rid of Hamlet? Why should _Hamlet_ appeal to him, except as a
melodrama with a flabby hero, a feeble heroine, a very small amount of
comic relief, and far too much dialogue, much of which is almost
unintelligible? What can he make of the great soliloquies, of the purple
patches, written in involved sentences, embellished by curious archaic
terms of speech, elaborate figures, and puzzling inversions, which at
the best can only give him a vague idea of what is supposed to be said?

If you were to send a highly educated man, ignorant of the play--perhaps
an apparent contradiction--he would at first be bored or irritated. No
doubt his ear might catch and his mind retain some profound phrases, and
he would promptly recognize the grandeur of the verse in many passages,
so that his curiosity would be awakened, and cause him either to read
the play or see it time after time. What about the man in the street,
the railway guard, the 'bus conductor, the "shover," the humbler clerks,
and their womenfolk, who are patrons of the gallery; will they get
beyond one visit? Can they recognize profound thoughts at first hearing,
or at all? Are they able to distinguish beautiful blank verse from
bombast? Are the soliloquies of Hamlet likely to lure them to the severe
intellectual task of reading the play scrupulously?

Of course these questions do not concern members of the "Gallery
First-Nighters'" Club. They may or may not patronize the sixpenny
gallery or shilling pit of the Lyceum. No doubt the members of the club
are fully competent to appreci