"Next to Shakespeare, but at a great distance below him, I would rank Moliere," said Rossi in answer to a query from one of the guests. "Moliere has given us real types of character and real humor. But he was the man of his epoch, not for all time. He has painted for us the men and manners of his day and generation: he did not take all humanity for a study. Therefore, his works appear old-fashioned on the modern stage, while those of Shakespeare will never seem faded or out of date."
"What a wonder, what a marvel was Shakespeare! He was an Englishman born and bred, yet he turns to Italy and paints for us a picture of Italian life and love such as no Italian hand has ever drawn. His heart throbs, his imagination glows, with all the fire and fervor of the South. He depicts for us a Moor, an African, and the sun of Africa scorches his brain and inflames his passions."
"And Hamlet," I remarked, "is thoroughly of the North—a German even, rather than Englishman."
"To me," answered Rossi, "Hamlet represents no nationality and no one type of character. He is the image of humanity. Hamlet is to me not a man, but Man. The sufferings, the doubts, the vague mysteries of life are incarnate in his person. He is ever checked by the Unknown. He is tortured by the phantasm of Doubt. Is the spectre indeed his father's shade? has it spoken truth? is it well to live? is it best to die?—such are the problems that perplex his brain."
"To be or not to be—that is the question; but it is only one of the questions that haunt his soul."
"A distinguished English actor who had come to Paris to see me act once asked me why, in the first scene with the Ghost, I betray no terror, while in the scene with the Queen I crouch in affright behind a chair, wild with alarm, the moment the phantom appears. I answered that in the first scene the Ghost comes before Hamlet as the image of a beloved and lamented parent, while in the second-named instance he appears as an embodiment of conscience. For Hamlet has disobeyed the mandate of the spectre: he has dared to threaten and upbraid his mother.
"The reason why the Ghost is visible to Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio In the first act, and not to the Queen in the third, has always appeared to me very simple. The phantom appears only to those who loved and mourned the dead king. Not to his false wife, not to her who, if not cognizant of his murder, is yet wedded to his murderer, will the pale Shape appear.
"Hamlet, above all tragedies, is independent of the accessories of scenery and costume. With a slight change of surroundings the character might be performed in modern dress without injury to its marvelous individuality."
Rossi was much surprised when he learned that most of the stage-business in Hamlet which he had studied out for himself formed part and parcel of the traditions of the play on the American and English boards. Among the points that he specified as having been thus thought out was the reference to the two miniatures in the scene with the Queen—