To begin with, he has probably a distinguished face, with a bunch of vigorous curly hair, white as hawthorn. He has a manner, too. Suppose you try and enter into his soul for a moment. It does us good to get outside ourselves for a while, and this old man's soul is a palace of memory. Those lines that, may be, have been familiar to you for sixteen years, have been familiar to him for sixty. That is why he knows them off so well, why he repeats them under his breath—Look at his face!—like a Methodist praying, anticipating the actor in all the fine speeches. Do look at his face! How it shines, as the golden passages come treading along. How his head moves in an ecstasy of remembrance, in which there is a whole world of tears. How he half turns to you with a wistful appeal to feel what he is feeling: an appeal that might kindle a clod. It is the old wine laughing to itself within the old bottle.
And, one thing you will notice, it is the poetry that moves him: the great metaphor, the sonorous cadence, the honeysuckle fancy. He belongs to an age that had an instinct for beauty, and loved style—an age that, in the words of a modern wit, had not grown all nose with intellect, an age that went to the theatre to dream, not to dissect.
For you there may be here and there a flower of remembrance stuck within the leaves of the play, but for him it is stained through with the sweets of sixty springs. His youth lies buried within it like a thousand violets.
Practically he is Death at the play. To you there is but one ghost in Hamlet, to him there are fifty, and they all dance like shadows behind 'the new Hamlet,' and even sit about the stalls.
If your love be with you, forbear to press her hand in the love-scenes, or, at least, don't let the old man see you: because he used to punctuate those very passages he is muttering in just the same way—sixty years ago, when she whose angel face he will kiss no more, unless it be in the heavenly fields, sat like a flower at his side. Poor old fellow, can you be selfish to him? Can you say, 'These tedious old fools!' Fool thyself, this night shall thy youth be required of thee.
You might think of this next time you drop across the old playgoer. It was natural in Hamlet to swear at Polonius—who, you will remember, was an old playgoer himself—but, being a gentleman, it was natural in him, too, to recall the first player with, 'Follow that lord; but look you mock him not!'
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
I sometimes grow melancholy with the thought that, though I wear trousers and shave once a day, I am not, properly speaking, a Man. Surely it is from no failure of goodwill, no lack of prayerful striving towards that noble estate: for if there is one spectacle in this moving phantasmagoria of life that I love to carry within my eye, it is the figure of a true man. The mere idea of a true man stirs one's heart like a trumpet. Therefore, this doubt I am confiding is all the more dreary. Naturally, I feel it most keenly in the company of my fellows, each one of whom seems to carry the victorious badge of manhood, as though to cry shame upon me. They make me shrink into myself, make me feel that I am but an impostor in their midst. Indeed, in that sensitiveness of mine you have the starting-point of my unmanliness. Look at that noble fellow there. He is six-foot odd in his stockings, straight, stalwart, and confident. His face is broad and strong, his close-cropped head is firm and proud on his shoulders—firm and proud as a young bull's. It is a head made, indeed, rather to butt than to think with; it is visited with no effeminacy of thought or dream. It has another striking quality: it is hardly distinguishable from any other head in the room—for I am in an assemblage of true men all, a glorious herd of young John Bulls. All have the same strong jaws, the same powerful low foreheads. Noble fellows! Any one of them could send me to eternity with the wind of his fist.
And, most of all, is their manhood brought home to me, with a sickening sense of inferiority, in their voices. What a leonine authority in the roar of their opinions! Their words strike the air firm as the tread of lions. They are not teased with fine distinctions, possibilities of misconception, or the perils of afterthought. Their talk is of the absolute, their opinions wear the primary colours, and dream not of 'art shades.' Never have they been wrong in their lives, never shall they be wrong in the time to come. Never have they been known to conjecture that another may, after all, be wiser than they, handsomer, stronger, or more fortunate. They would kill a man rather than admit a mistake. Noble fellows! And I? Do you wonder that I blush in my corner as I gaze upon them, strive to smooth my hair into the appearance of a manly flatness, strive to set my face hard and feign it knowing, strive to elevate my voice to the dogmatic note, strive to cast out from my mind all those evil spirits of proportion?