Hamlet's
murdered father opened his lips for the first time, we might almost
imagine that in the words "pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
to what I shall unfold," he was reflecting the author's personal
interest in the proceedings of that memorable afternoon.[5] We can
imagine Shakespeare, as he saw the audience responding to his grave
appeal, giving with a growing confidence, the subsequent words, which
he repeated while he moved to the centre of the platform-stage, and
turned to face the whole house:--

I find thee apt;
And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.

[Footnote 5: Performances of plays in Shakespeare's time always took
place in the afternoon.]

As the Ghost vanished and the air rang mysteriously with his piercing
words "Remember me," we would like to imagine the whole intelligence
of Elizabethan England responding to that cry as it sprang on its
first utterance in the theatre from the great dramatist's own lips.
Since that memorable day, at any rate, the whole intelligence of the
world has responded to that cry with all Hamlet's ecstasy, and with
but a single modification of the phraseology:--

Remember thee!
Ay, thou _great soul_, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.

III

There is a certain justification, in fact, for the fancy that the
_plaudites_ were loud and long, when Shakespeare created the role of
the "poor ghost" in the first production of his play of _Hamlet_ in
1602. There is no doubt at all that Shakespeare conspicuously caught
the ear of the Elizabethan playgoer at a very early date in his
career, and that he held it firmly for life. "These plays," wrote two
of his professional associates of the reception of the whole series in
the playhouse in his lifetime--"These plays have had their trial
already, and stood out all appeals." Matthew Arnold, apparently quite
unconsciously, echoed the precise phrase when seeking to express
poetically the universality of Shakespeare's reputation in our own
day.

Others abide our judgment, thou art free,

is the first line of Arnold's well-known sonnet, which attests the
rank allotted to Shakespeare in the literary hierarchy by the
professional critic, nearly two and a half centuries after the
dramatist's death. There was no narrower qualification in the
apostrophe of