ctors of the
perspective and statuary school of action) which sometimes increases the
difficulty of giving verisimility to the scene, or rather destroys it
altogether. We allude to the actors, in all possible cases, entering
from the back, or near it. This though sometimes right, is peculiarly
improper when the entering character is to speak _aside_ as he enters,
and is supposed by the cunning of the scene not to be heard by the
character who is on the stage before him. It was particularly observable
in the performances of Othello and Venice Preserved. In the third scene
of the third act, when Othello, followed by Iago, enters to Desdemona,
Emilia, and Cassio, (which last takes his leave suddenly on the Moor's
approach) and Iago, in prosecution of his plan, exclaims, so as to be
heard _by Othello only_, "HA! I LIKE NOT THAT," Mr. Cooper and Mr. Wood
entering too far from the stage, rendered it necessary for the latter to
utter those words (_aside_) so loud, that they must necessarily have
been heard by _all_ the other characters on the stage.

Again, in Venice Preserved, in the night-scene on the Rialto, Jaffier
being on the stage in his proper place, soliloquizing, Pierre enters and
says what certainly neither Jaffier nor any but the audience should be
presumed to hear. Mossop, Sheridan, Henderson, _et id genus omne_,
entered so near the stage, that the voice of Pierre might be supposed to
reach the audience, without passing through Jaffier's ear. Side speaking
ought always to be done in that way. Mr. Cooper, on the contrary,
entered from the wing next the back scene, so that Jaffier stood between
him and the audience, and must of course be supposed to have heard him,
if the audience heard him; as they did, very distinctly too, from the
remote end of the stage, say aloud,

"Sure I've staid too long:
The clock has struck, _and I may lose my proselyte_."

Exclusive of which a great injury to the necessary illusion arises from
the _side_ speaker being obliged to speak so high that not only the
characters on the stage, but the people in the neighbouring houses must
be supposed to be all let into the secret, and he cannot, therefore, be
thought to intend to speak aside. In the good old times they were as
scrupulously exact in these matters, as they are now most blamably lax.

HAMLET.

Many of Mr. Cooper's admirers set down his Hamlet as the best of his
performances; a proposition to which we can never