sounded so gloomily ironical and sad that an involuntary thrill ran through the audience.
And when the queen, with hypocritical words of consolation, said:
“Thou knowst ’tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity,”
he slowly raised his long eyelashes, which he had kept lowered until that moment, looked reproachfully at her, and then answered with a slight shake of the head:
“Ay, madam, it is common.”
After these words, expressing so fully his grief for his dead father, his own aversion from life and submission to fate, and his bitter scorn of his mother’s light-mindedness, Kostromsky, with the special, delicate, inexplicable sensitiveness of an experienced actor, felt that now he had entirely gripped his audience and bound them to him with an inviolable chain.
It seemed as if no one had ever before spoken with such marvellous force that despairing speech of Hamlet at the exit of the king and queen:
“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!”
The nasal tones of Kostromsky’s voice were clear and flexible. Now it rang out with a mighty clang, then sank to a gentle velvety whisper or burst into hardly restrained sobs.
And when, with a simple yet elegant gesture, Kostromsky pronounced the last words: