(Great confusion as Dixonus quits the room.)
Tableau.
——:o:——
When Mr. Wilson Barrett announced that he was about to produce “Hamlet” at the Princess’s Theatre, someone wrote the following, not very profound, criticisms upon the tragedy:—
Hamlet from a new point of view.
“Seeing an announcement to the effect that ‘Hamlet’ is in preparation at the Princess’s Theatre, set me thinking a bit about the matter; and I give in a free and unstudied manner the fruits of my thoughts. First, I wondered if one out of ten who’d read the bills would know anything really about either the play or the poet? Of the difference between the Hamlet of the first edition, of 1623, and that, say of Knight’s, of 1843.
Open the two at random, and Ophelia says in the first, in Actus Secundus, Scena Secunda:—
‘O, what a noble minde is here o’re-throwne?
The Courtiers, Soldiers, Schollers, Eye, tongue, sword.’
In Knight’s the like words occur, only slightly altered in spelling; and in the ordinary acting edition the lines run:—