gic of his eye, and of his commanding voice:
physical properties, vastly desirable in an actor, and without which
he can never insinuate meaning into an auditory,--but what have they
to do with Hamlet? what have they to do with intellect? In fact, the
things aimed at in theatrical representation, are to arrest the
spectator's eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to gain a more
favourable hearing to what is spoken: it is not what the character is,
but how he looks; not what he says, but how he speaks it. I see no
reason to think that if the play of _Hamlet_ were written over again
by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the
story, but totally omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine
features of Shakespeare, his stupendous intellect; and only taking
care to give us enough of passionate dialogue, which Banks or Lillo
were never at a loss to furnish; I see not how the effect could be
much different upon an audience, nor how the actor has it in his power
to represent Shakespeare to us differently from his representation of
Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a youthful accomplished prince,
and must be gracefully personated; he might be puzzled in his mind,
wavering in his conduct, seemingly-cruel to Ophelia, he might see a
ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly when he found it to be
his father; all this in the poorest and most homely language of the
servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted the palate of an
audience; without troubling Shakespeare for the matter: and I see not
but there would be room for all the power which an actor has, to
display itself. All the passions and changes of passion might remain:
for those are much less difficult to write or act than is thought, it
is a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising or falling a note or
two in the voice, a whisper with a significant foreboding look to
announce its approach, and so contagious the counterfeit appearance of
any emotion is, that let the words be what they will, the look and
tone shall carry it off and make it pass for deep skill in the
passions.

It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare's plays being _so
natural_; that everybody can understand him. They are natural indeed,
they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth of them lies
out of the reach of most of us. You shall hear the same persons say
that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very natural,
that they are both v