"I feel it, see it, believe it, and my eyebrows ascend, my mouth opens, my arms stretch out."
"So they would if you saw a house on fire. These are the hereditary exponents of surprise and fear; but a ghost creates a different feeling; it ought to be differently expressed: not surprise—it is above it: not fear—for neither Macbeth nor Hamlet are capable of such a feeling; but awe—something very different from any other state of mind they ever experienced before. They should move little, speak low, make no faces, and, above all things, show that the sentiment comes from within. It will find its way, by sympathy, to the pit. They will see the propriety of making little noise in presence of a murdered general or a buried king. Martingdale roars as if he were in presence of a murdered bull, and was triumphing over its death. He bellows as if he felt he had conquered a rival, and now had all the noise to himself. But more: I would invest the whole character of Hamlet with an atmosphere of the supernatural. No man who had held parley with the dead, and was marshalled on to a great act by invisible hands, should ever be without an impression of the awful presence. I would make him throw inquiring glances round, even in his talk with the gravedigger. That ghost should never leave the eyes of the pit; present or absent, the supernatural should rule the stage. When Hamlet is silent, he should be distrait—inattentive to what is going on, and holding inward converse with his unearthly visitor. Don't you think he went really mad? To be sure he did. Who wouldn't, if night and day he were haunted by a ghost, commanding him to commit a murder, to revenge a father, to break the heart of the girl who loved him? Of course he went mad, though I don't found that belief on the crumpled state of his stocking, but on the broad ground that no man can see ghosts, and hear strange voices from the other world, and see a dreadful action forced on him of which he doesn't know the result, and yet remain as firm in his pulse, and collected in his faculties, as a chairman of Quarter Sessions, or an alderman at a city feast."
"I fear, Miss Claribel, you form such an estimate of an actor's requirements, that you will never fulfil your own expectations." I spoke with a slight tone of displeasure.
"You are very severe," she replied; "but I will fulfil my own expectations, for they are not very high. I will enter into Ophelia's feelings—they shall enter into me; and I and Ophelia shall be one and indivisible."
"Now, you are not afraid of the 'mannerism' you spoke of some days ago?"
"It is the rock people who enter into a character are apt to split on; but I will endeavour to bear Juliet and Desdemona, and Viola, all with a difference."
"We shall see," I said, in no good humour. "On Thursday we shall go down to the Paragon Royal. My mother will go and be spectatress of the fight; and, come what may, I will show the world a true reading of the noble Dane." Miss Claribel smiled, and so did my mother, exemplifying the numerous meanings that can be conveyed by that position of the lips. Miss Claribel's was the more beautiful mouth, but I liked the expression of my mother's more.
I pass over the preparations, the journey, the disappointment at the sight of the ugly street and hideous building in which our fortunes were to be tried. At six I was dressed and on the stage, Miss Claribel in her dressing-room, my mother in a stage-box; not a soul in the pit, nobody at the door; two orange-women standing beside their baskets near the orchestra, and the whole house, as seen by me through a hole in the green curtain, deserted and uncomfortable in the extreme. The manager, a most polite little gentleman, who was great in comedy, and enacted the part of Osric, was at my side. I pointed out the discouraging aspect of the theatre. "O, you'll see in half an hour," he said, "crowds filling every seat. My Osric is a poor part, but very popular."
Polonius joined us, an old man, who at Christmas was a great favourite as Pantaloon in the pantomime.
"It will be a great house, I feel sure," he mumbled through his toothless gums. "Old Jack Ivory as Polonius is sure to draw." Not one of them attributed the expected multitude in any respect to the debutant in Hamlet, or the beauty of the Ophelia.