No sooner had we seated ourselves than to my extreme astonishment something fell on to my sister’s hat. It turned out to be a piece of orange peel. Here I must mention that an essential part of a lady’s coiffure in London is a flat round hat, which is a most ingenious device of coquetry. It heightens beauty and diminishes ugliness; it confers grace and play to the features. It is impossible to tell you all the varied effects an Englishwoman can derive from her hat. Curiously enough, the hat is not worn on State occasions, and neither at Court nor at assemblies, nor even in the premières loges of the theatre, and its place is taken by French feathers. I was just wondering whence the piece of orange peel had proceeded when I saw a man come from behind the scenes with a large broom in his hand. Knowing that Shakespeare makes use of everything that pertains to human life, I thought that “Hamlet” was going to begin by a sweeping scene. I was mistaken. It was only a servant who was cleaning the front of the stage, which I now noticed was covered with the remains of the feast of oranges and apples which was taking place in the upper gallery, and of which my sister had received a small sample on her hat.
At last the play began. Not having the good fortune to understand the English language, I could not follow one word of the dialogue. But I am told that the play gains rather than loses by being translated, though our Anglomaniacs say it is untranslatable. But I have now read the play in M. Letourneur’s translation. The play is sheer madness—nay, more, it is the wildest and most extravagant thing that a madman could devise in a fit of delirium. Towards the end of the play only six characters remain alive, and they all die a violent death. The King and the Queen are poisoned on the stage. Hamlet, after having assassinated the Lord Chamberlain and his son, dies himself of a poisoned wound. His lady-love throws herself out of the window and is drowned; the Ghost, who enlivens this farrago of horrors, was poisoned himself (in the ear).
Lest the spectators should be overcome by so many murders, the “divine” Shakespeare has given them moments of relief in the person of the Lord Chamberlain, who is a coarse buffoon, and the conversation of the grave-diggers, who, while they crack their insipid jests, dig a real grave, throw real black earth on to the stage, of the same colour and substance as that which is found in churchyards, full of real bones and real skulls. In order to give an effect of reality, there are some large skulls and some small ones. Hamlet recognizes one as having belonged to a clown whom he knew. He seems to caress it, and to moralize over it. And these horrors, and the still more disgusting pleasantry, seemed vastly to please the upper gallery, the pit, and even the boxes. The people who were near me and behind me stood up on their seats and craned forward to look, and one man, in order to see better, lifted himself up by pulling my hair.
What strikes me most in thinking of this performance is the contrast that exists in England between the mildness and the leniency of the English customs and legislation in criminal matters, and the barbarity and savagery of the entertainments in their playhouses. On the same morning that “Hamlet” was performed, the execution of Dr. Dodd was carried out at Tyburn. Doctor Dodd was a minister of the Church, highly respected for his eloquence. He had been Aumonier to the King, and cherished the ambition of becoming a bishop. With this object, he had caused his wife to offer the sum of a thousand guineas to the wife of a Minister. The transaction was discovered and Dr. Dodd was dismissed from his post, but still retained a living. He had been the tutor of a son of a man who is well known here, Lord Chesterfield, and in the name of the young lord he signed a bond of four thousand guineas. This was also discovered, and it constitutes what they here call the crime of forgery, for which Dr. Dodd was condemned to death. In spite of many petitions the sentence was carried out yesterday, June 27. I assisted at the execution. A stranger accustomed to the terror-inspiring machinery, to the noise and fuss with which, in the rest of Europe, the decrees of justice are executed, and which are designed to serve as a terrible example, would be astonished at the manner in which it is done here. Here there are no soldiers, no representatives of the army, no outward signs of ferocity, no preliminary torture. Here that humanity, which the law seems to forget from the moment the judge has uttered the word guilty—by letting a long delay elapse between the pronouncement of the sentence and the execution—reappears as soon as the prison opens its doors and delivers the prisoner to the sheriffs, who are charged with carrying out the sentence. The sheriffs are not military men; they have no mercenaries under them, but merely a certain number of constables, ordinary bourgeois, whose only uniform consists in a long stick painted and partially gilded.
The victim, bound, without constraint, by the cord which is to hang him, is seated on a cart draped in black, or he may obtain leave to use a carriage, and this is what was done yesterday. The carriage passed slowly up Oxford Street, one of the longest and broadest streets of London. The prisoner had no escort, save a small number of constables on foot, and some sheriffs on horseback. He is condemned by the law, it is the law which leads him to death. The officers show no signs, either of threatening or fear, lest the people should oppose themselves to a severity which has their safety for object.
The immense crowd which fills the streets, especially in a case like this one, which has been so much talked about, maintains a respectful silence. When they arrived at Tyburn Dr. Dodd left his carriage and mounted on a cart which stopped under the horizontal beam of the gallows. The executioner then appeared, untied the rope, and attached it to the transverse beam. The victim conversed with a minister of the Church, who recalled his crime, and spoke of the necessity of expiation. After a short pause, the executioner covered the victim’s head with a handkerchief, which he drew down to his chin. The first sheriff made a sign; the executioner touched the horse, the cart went on, and the work of execution was thus almost imperceptibly accomplished. After the body has remained hanging for an hour it is cut down and restored to the relatives of the deceased. He is then no longer a culprit, but a citizen who regains the rights he had forfeited by crime. His memory is not held in obloquy; for instance, the brother of Dr. Dodd succeeded to his living on the recommendation of Lord Chesterfield.
Now to return to the playhouse and “Hamlet.” How is it that a people which abhors bloodshed in general, which fears murder, to whom poison and assassination are unknown, and which carries regard even towards the criminal to the extent I have described, can take pleasure in theatrical spectacles as barbarous and revolting as their own? The executions at London seem but games. The tragedies of the playhouse, on the other hand, are butcheries, causing even such spectators as are familiar with bloodshed to shudder.
It is only fair to say that those Englishmen who have read and travelled are slightly embarrassed when a foreigner, who has heard the extravagant praises paid to the “divine” Shakespeare, comes to London to see for himself the works of this genius. They tell us that the populace are the lords of the English stage, and that they must needs be pleased. It is their depraved taste, we are told, which maintains these spectacles which would empty the theatres in any other country. I am quite ready to believe it; but then it is only drunken sailors who should be asked to admire Shakespeare, since it is only by drunken sailors that his altars are supported.
On the other hand, I cannot help adding that educated society shares to a certain extent the prejudice of the rabble, since it shares their pleasures. The boxes are always full when Shakespeare is on the bill, and last night the play was well received; the disgusting jokes and the extravagant ravings duly listened to and applauded by men, women, lawyers, merchants, lords, and sailors. One and all they seemed to breathe with delight the obnoxious vapours of that earth which is made up of the remains of corpses. Compare this deliberate brutality, which educated men have tried to justify in books, with the mildness of the penal laws and the real executions, and explain it if you can! As for me, I will not visit the playhouse again until the question is solved.