came out more strongly in Mr. Booth's delineation of these later scenes. When Laer

tes says

"A ministering angel shall my sister be," Hamlet, according to the text, utters the exclamation

"What! the fair Ophelia!"

No syllable of this phrase could be heard. Only a wild, inarticulate cry escaped him; and he muffled his face in his cloak. He seemed to have gone behind Shakespeare's language, into Shakespeare's thought.

Following this fine touch of feeling and character, came what seems to us a wholly unauthorized reading:

"What is he whose grief

Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and bids them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,

Hamlet the Dane."

So Shakespeare; but Booth made a full stop after the word "stand; " then said

"Look! wonder-wounded hearers, this is I," etc.

The scene, however, was grandly carried to completion. The storm of mingled grief and love for the dead Ophelia; of anger breaking through respect, for Laertes, could never

have had a more characteristic representation.

Hamlet consents to play the wager with Laertes, but is possessed by a presentiment of evil. We had heard Mr. Booth give the passage thus:

"It is but foolery, but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would, perhaps (slight pause, then in lower tone), trouble a woman,"

meaning, "it ought not to trouble me, a man, yet I feel it does." On this occasion he said

How

"As would, perhaps, trouble (slight pause) a woman,” meaning, "but shall not trouble me." fine the sentiment, how delicate the apprehension, that could dictate these distinctions. The wavering balance inclines toward the latter reading; for to Horatio's friendly dissuasion, Hamlet immediately rejoins "Not a whit; we defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Rufus Choate said, "I have seen him act Hamlet exquisitely:" and again, in comparing Kean and Booth, he said, "This man (Booth) has finer touches."

The last scene was full of grace and dramatic truth, in the fencing match with Laer

tes, and in its accumulation of tragical results. Well might Fortinbras, coming in peaceful march from recent victory, exclaim

"O, proud Death!

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes, at a shot,

So bloodily hast struck?”

Dullness no doubt in us, in early readings of the play, but we confess our indebtedness to Mr. Booth, for the true meaning of a line in Hamlet's last speech. After he has wrested the poisoned cup from Horatio's hand, he

says

"If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.”

Striving against the poison at work in his own frame, he begs Horatio to live, and lifts his hand toward that heaven whither he felt his noble friend would go, saying

"Absent thee from felicity awhile."

We have taken more copious notes of Booth's Hamlet than of any other character assumed by him. But in reviewing the miscellany, something of Antony's impatience at the prolixity of his messenger from Rome, prompts us to exclaim: "Grates me: the

sum!" What is the sum of Hamlet; what the personal unity of that marvelous and various life? We venture no opinion. But the total impression left by Mr. Booth's personation, at the time of its occurrence, and which still abides, was that of a spiritual melancholy, at once acute and profound. This quality colored his tenderest feeling and his airiest fancy as well as his graver purpose. You felt its presence even when he was off the stage. As the Claude mirror defines, refines, and tones the landscape, so Booth's impersonation lent a saddened and mysterious charm to the vast world of Hamlet's thought and observation.

SHYLOCK.

THE Hebrew blood, which, from some remote ancestor, mingled in the current of his life ; and was evidently traceable in his features; and haply determined the family name (Booth from Beth, Hebrew for house, or nest for birds), did also undoubtedly influence Mr. Booth's conception of the character of Shylock.

He made it the representative Hebrew: the type of a race, old as the world. He drew the character in lines of simple grandeur, and filled it with fiery energy. In his hands, it was marked by pride of intellect; by intense pride of race; by a reserved force, as if there centered in him the might of a people whom neither time, nor scorn, nor political oppression could subdue ; and which has at successive periods, even down to our own day, drawn the attention of mankind towards its frequent examples of intellectual power. His pronunciation of the words