son that they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes not under
the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing
to do.
The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and the turns of passion;
and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the more hold upon the
eyes and ears of the spectators the performer obviously possesses. For this
reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons talk themselves into a fit
of fury, and then in a surprising manner talk themselves out of it again, have
always been the most popular upon our stage. And the reason is plain,
because the spectators are here most palpably appealed to, they are the
proper judges in this war of words, they are the legitimate ring that should be
formed round such 'intellectual prize-fighters.' Talking is the direct object of
the imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and in Shakespeare above all,
how obvious it is, that the form of speaking, whether it be in soliloquy or dia
logue, is only a medium, and often a highly artificial one, for putting the
reader or spectator into possession of that knowledge of the inner structure
and workings of a mind in a character, which he could otherwise never have
arrived at in that form of composition by any gift short of intuition. We do here
as we do with novels written in the epistolary form. How many improprieties,
perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put up with in Clarissa3 and other
1. Published under Lamb's name in the magazine 1823) and his sister Sarah Siddons (1755-1831). The Reflector in 1811 . 3. Samuel Richardson's novel in letters, published 2. Acclaimed actors John Philip Kemble (1757? 1747?48, admired across Europe for its illumina
.
494 / CHARLES LAMB
books, for the sake of the delight which that form upon the whole gives us.
But the practice of stage representation reduces every thing to a controversy
of elocution. Every character, from the boisterous blasphemings of Bajazet4 to
the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must play the orator. * 4 *
The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days of Bet
terton,5 a succession of popular performers have had the greatest ambition to
distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one of their reasons.
But for the character itself, we find it in a play, and therefore we judge it a fit
subject of dramatic representation. The play itself abounds in maxims and
reflections beyond any other, and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle
for conveying moral instruction. But Hamlet himself?what does he suffer
meanwhile by being dragged forth as a public schoolmaster, to give lectures
to the crowd! Why, nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions
between himself and his moral sense, they are the effusions of his solitary
musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts
of the palace to pour forth; or rather, they are the silent meditations with
which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the sake of the reader, who
must else remain ignorant of what is passing there. These profound sorrows,
these light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares
utter to deaf walls and chambers, how can they be represented by a gesticu
lating actor, who comes and mouths them out before an audience, making
four hundred people his confidants at once? I say not that it is the fault of the
actor so to do; he must pronounce them ore rotundo,6 he must accompany
them with his eye; he must insinuate them into his auditory by some trick of
eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. He must be thinking all the while of his
appearance, because he knows that all the while the spectators are judging of it.
