is mother, Madame RICHARD ("O RICHARD! _O ma Reine_!")
like a big, blubbering, overgrown schoolboy. Were I inclined to
disquisitionise, I should say that Messieurs CARRE and BARBIER have
actually realised SHAKSPEARE's own description of his jelly-fleshed
hero, whose mind is as shaky as his well-covered body. _Hamlet_
was--as SHAKSPEARE took care to emphasise--"fat, and scant of
breath"--which was the physical description of the actor who first
impersonated the leading _role_ of this play; and the French author's
idea of _Hamlet_ was, accordingly, a fat youth, very much out of
condition, home from Wittenberg College, in consequence of his
father's recent decease.

[Illustration: Hamlet is out of it in the last Act. Why wasn't he
brought into the Ballet?]

Some of the lighter musical portions of the Opera are charming, and
the Chorus at the end of Act I, might have been written by OFFENBACH.
But what is there of the story? Nothing. The King is not killed: the
Queen isn't poisoned: _Polonius_ is not stabbed behind the arras,
having been, perhaps, killed before the Opera commenced, since his
name appears in the book but not in the programme, and the only person
on the stage that I could possibly associate with that dear old
Lord Chamberlain was M. MIRANDA, who had donned a white beard and a
different robe from what he had been previously wearing as _Horatio_
in the First and Second Acts, in order to enter and lead the King
away, in an interpolated and ineffective scene which was not in the
book. A very hard-working Opera for the principals, and a thankless
task. _Hamlet's_ drinking song fine, and finely sung. But the whole
point of the Opera is in the last Act, where there is a _ballet_ that
has nothing to do with the piece, but pretty to see little PALLADINO
in short white skirts, dancing merrily in a forest glade, among the
happy peasantry, to whom comes _Ophelia_, mad as several hatters,
and after a lunatic scene, charming, both musically and dramatically,
throws herself into the water, and dies singing.

Here is a suggestion for the effective compression and reduction
of the Opera, and if my plan be accepted, DRURIOLANUS will earn the
eternal gratitude of those who would like to hear all that is good in
it, and to skip, as PALLADINO does, the rest. Thus:--

ACT I.--_Enter_ HAMLET. _Solo. Exit. Enter_ OPHELIA. _Solo. Re-enter_
HAMLET. OPHELIA _and_ HAMLET _love-duet. Exit_ OPHELIA. HAMLET'S
_Friends come in, and he