dence of the fear which had taken hold of him. Not only was the altered play not printed, but no written copies of it were allowed to get into circulation. The actor, Tate Wilkinson, then patentee of the York and other theatres in the North, applied for one in vain. "It is not in my power to comply with your request to send you the corrections lately made in Hamlet," " wrote in reply Victor, the treasurer of Drury Lane; "but no such favor can be granted to any one, as I presume the play will never be printed so altered, as they are far from being universally approved; nay, in general greatly disliked by the million; therefore, no doubt, your country 'squires would be for horsewhipping the actor that had struck out that natural scene of the grave-diggers." Victor then went on to point out that Hamlet's consenting to go to England, and being brought back by miracle, is altogether absurd, when his solemn engagement with his father's ghost is duly considered. Then unconsciously he revealed the superiority of the judgment of the masses to his own. "As I have already observed," he concluded, "the million will like, nay understand Shakespeare with all his glorious absurdities, nor suffer a bold intruder to cut them up." 1 The only consolation that could be received for this attitude of the artistically unregenerate was that they were incapable of reaching the elevated plane which their betters occupied. There were some of Garrick's admirers, however, who stood by him manfully, and without doubt approved in fullest sincerity of his 1 Wilkinson's Memoirs of his own Life, vol. iv. p. 260. course. One of them complained that he had not gone far enough. "Twenty-five lines only added," wrote Hoadly, when his friend sent him word to that effect: "I fear too little has been done."1 This writer, who was a clergyman for livelihood, and would have been a dramatist if he had had sufficient ability, had felt somewhat hurt because he had not been consulted about this revision. It was a matter which he had more than once discussed with the actor. His inborn discernment and educated taste had indicated to him numerous places where Shakespeare's work required improvement. The behavior to each other of Hamlet and Ophelia was in his opinion a part that needed and most admitted great alteration. The conduct of the hero towards the heroine, in particular, had not been sufficiently worked out by the dramatist. No adequate cause had been given to account for the madness and death of the latter. This could and should be remedied; and here was the way in which it was done in one instance. The concluding lines of Hamlet's soliloquy end with his recognition of Ophelia in these words, The fair Ophelia ! " "Soft you now ! Then follows the request to be remembered in her prayers. After Hamlet's recognition of her presence, but before he addresses her personally, Hoadly suggested that the following lines should be added to the soliloquy, which would explain to the satisfaction of everybody the prince's subsequent conduct: 1 Garrick Correspondence, vol. i. p. 515. "I have made too free With that sweet lady's ear. My place in Denmark, As fish the cormorant. - She drops a tear, Nymph, in thy orisons be my sins remembered.” 1 These priceless lines show us what the eighteenth century could do when it set out seriously to reform Shakespeare, to correct his negligence and refine his ruggedness in accordance with the requirements of taste and art. The altered Hamlet' held the stage at Drury Lane for nearly eight years. But it was not often played. The audience might put up with the version; but they plainly did not love it. In this feeling high and low concurred. Accordingly, on April 21, 1780, little more than a year after Garrick's death, Hamlet was advertised to be acted as Shakespeare wrote it.2 Contemporary testimony shows that the abandonment of the alteration took place, not under the compulsion of active hostility, manifested according to the then usual custom in the playhouse itself, but simply in consequence of the refusal of people to attend the performance of the piece. "Since the death of the player," said Reed in 1782, "the public has vindicated the rights of the poet by starving the theatre into compliance with 1 Garrick Correspondence, vol. i. p. 573. Letter dated Sept. 30, 1773. 2 Genest, vol. vi. p. 133. their wishes to see Hamlet as originally meant for exhibition." 1 Thus early disappeared from the boards the alteration so long desired by a certain class. It was practically the last serious attempt upon Shakespeare which correctness made as a tribute to an assumed higher taste. Some of Kemble's later versions were even viler; but they were not original. That actor only refashioned what others had previously accomplished. Garrick's course in this matter is one of which explanation can be given, but for which defence cannot be made. The student of English constitutional history has frequent occasion to observe how infinitely superior has sometimes been the stupidity of juries to the wisdom of judiciaries. Examples of a similar sort do not so often meet the eye of the student of literary history. Still they are to be found. Among them there is perhaps no more striking illustration than the present, of the superiority of judgment sometimes shown by the great mass of men to that arrogantly boasted of by the select body of self-appointed arbiters of taste and guardians of dramatic propriety. 1 Biographia Dramatica, ed. of 1782, under Hamlet. CHAPTER V REPRESENTATIONS OF VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED THE violation of the unities, the intermixture of comic scenes with tragic were two faults which in the eyes of the classicists placed an ineffaceable stigma upon the romantic drama. About their essential depravity both continental and English critics were agreed. Shakespeare, in consequence of his exemplifying these atrocities, was regularly made the subject of the tale which he was not thought to adorn, and served constantly to point its moral. It is true that he had not acted differently from almost every one of his contemporaries. They were as regardless of these rules as he. But while others had sinned as much against art, he was the only one who had really survived. He was the only one who continued to impress himself upon successive generations. Particular plays of certain of his contemporaries Fletcher especially, and occasionally Jonson and Massinger-were from time to time refitted for the stage and brought out during the eighteenth century. But they had at best but a partial success; they often met with positive failure. "It may be remembered," said Colman in 1763, "that "The Spanish Curate,' The Little French Lawyer,' and 'Scornful Lady' of our authors," that is, Beaumont and Fletcher," as well as 'The Silent Woman' of Jonson, |