ucceeded the announcement of a prolonged engagement, the
failing health of the younger Rossi having decided his father to
relinquish all immediate idea of an American tour.

The second character that Rossi assumed was Hamlet, and in this he
achieved the greatest success of his Parisian engagement. The opera
of Thomas had rendered the public familiar with the personage of the
hero, and the magnates of the Grand Opera came to the Salle Ventadour
to study this new and forcible presentment of the baritone prince,
who wails and warbles through the operatic travesty of Shakespeare's
masterpiece. That the impersonation will prove wholly acceptable to
all Shakespearian critics in England or America is extremely doubtful.
For the Hamlet of Rossi is mad--undeniably, unmistakably mad--from the
moment of his interview with the Ghost. But once accept that view, and
the characterization stands unrivaled upon our modern stage. Nothing
can be imagined at once more powerful or more pathetic than that
picture of a "noble mind o'erthrown," alternating between crushed,
hopeless misery and wild excitement--thirsting for the rest and peace
that only death can bestow, yet shrinking from the fearful leap
into the dim unknown beyond the grave. The scene with the Queen is
inimitably grand. One feels that the entrance of the Ghost comes
only in time to stay the frenzied hand, and then follows the swift
revulsion when Hamlet, melting into tenderest pathos, kneels at his
mother's feet to beseech her to repent--a mood that changes anew to
frenzy when his wild wandering thoughts are turned toward the King.
It is only in the last scene of the play that the approach of death
scatters the clouds that have so long obscured the grief-tortured
brain. Nothing can be imagined finer or more picturesque than this
closing scene. On the raised dais in the centre of the stage, and
on the throne from which the King has been hurled, the dying prince,
conqueror and sovereign in this last supreme moment, dominates the
scene of death and carnage, triumphant over all, even in the clutches
of his own relentless doom.

As the Hamlet of Rossi is unmistakably mad, so his Macbeth is an
undeniable craven and criminal. I can compare this personation to
nothing so much as to that of a man haunted by a fiend. For the steps
of Macbeth are dogged ever by an unseen devil--namely, his own evil
yet coward nature. He is wicked and he is afraid. The whole physique
of Rossi in the sc