. Finally, he comes before us in that poetical, speculative period of
life following the years of study and pleasure, and preceding those of
executive leadership. Prince, gentleman, scholar, poet,--he is each, and
all together, and attracts us from every point of view.

Upon this noblest youth--so far in advance of his rude and turbulent
time--throw a horror that no philosophy, birth, nor training can
resist--one of those weights beneath which all humanity bows shuddering;
cast over him a stifling dream, where only the soul can act, and the
limbs refuse their offices; have him pushed along by Fate to the
lowering, ruinous catastrophe; and you see the dramatic chainwork of a
part which he who would enact Hamlet must fulfil.

It has been said, distinguishing between the effects of comedy and
tragedy, that to render the latter ennobles actors, so that successful
tragedians have acquired graces of personal behavior. But one who does
not possess native fineness before his portrayal of Hamlet will never be
made a gentleman by the part. In its more excited phases, a man not born
to the character may succeed. As in Lear, the excess of the passion
displayed serves as a mask to the actor's disposition. In its repose,
the ideal Hamlet is hard to counterfeit. In the reflective portions and
exquisite minor play which largely occupy its progress, and in the
princely superiority of its chief figure, there can be little _acting_
in the conventional sense. There is a quality which no false ware can
imitate. The player must be himself.

This necessity, we think, goes far toward Booth's special fitness for
the part. He is in full sympathy with it, whether on or off the stage.
We know it from our earliest glance at that lithe and sinuous figure,
elegant in the solemn garb of sables,--at the pallor of his face and
hands, the darkness of his hair, those eyes that can be so
melancholy-sweet, yet ever look beyond and deeper than the things about
him. Where a burlier tragedian must elaborately pose himself for the
youth he would assume, this actor so easily and constantly falls into
beautiful attitudes and movements, that he seems to go about, as we
heard a humorist say, "making statues all over the stage." No picture
can equal the scene where Horatio and Marcellus swear by his sword, he
holding the crossed hilt upright between the two, his head thrown back
and lit with high resolve. In the fencing-bout with Laertes he is the
apotheosis of gr