We were silent.
“Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?”
We hung our head.
“If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly ridiculous. In Shakespeare’s day—as I could prove in a moment if you had the intelligence to understand it—there was no such thing as black velvet. It didn’t exist.”
“And how then,” we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet delighted, “do you present Hamlet?”
“In brown velvet,” said the Great Actor.
“Great Heavens,” we exclaimed, “this is a revolution.”
“It is. But that is only one part of my conception. The main thing will be my presentation of what I may call the psychology of Hamlet.”
“The psychology!” we said.
“Yes,” resumed the Great Actor, “the psychology. To make Hamlet understood, I want to show him as a man bowed down by a great burden. He is overwhelmed with Weltschmerz. He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in fact, everlasting negation lies on him—”