f
it at the Castle yielded every one of us the greatest satisfaction. On
that occasion we proposed to act the piece; and I, not knowing what I
undertook, engaged to play the Prince's part. This I conceived that I
was studying, while I began to get by heart the strongest passages, the
soliloquies, and those scenes in which force of soul, vehemence, and
elevation of feeling have the freest scope; where the agitated heart is
allowed to display itself with touching expressiveness.

"I further conceived that I was penetrating quite into the spirit of the
character, while I endeavored as it were to take upon myself the load of
deep melancholy under which my prototype was laboring, and in this humor
to pursue him through the strange labyrinths of his caprices and his
singularities. Thus learning, thus practicing, I doubted not but I
should by-and-by become one person with my hero.

"But the farther I advanced, the more difficult did it become for me to
form any image of the whole, in its general bearings; till at last it
seemed as if impossible. I next went through the entire piece, without
interruption; but here too I found much that I could not away with. At
one time the characters, at another time the manner of displaying them,
seemed inconsistent; and I almost despaired of finding any general tint,
in which I might present my whole part with all its shadings and
variations. In such devious paths I toiled, and wandered long in vain;
till at length a hope arose that I might reach my aim in quite a new
way.

"I set about investigating every trace of Hamlet's character, as it had
shown itself before his father's death: I endeavored to distinguish what
in it was independent of this mournful event; independent of the
terrible events that followed; and what most probably the young man
would have been, had no such thing occurred.

"Soft, and from a noble stem, this royal flower had sprung up under the
immediate influences of majesty; the idea of moral rectitude with that
of princely elevation, the feeling of the good and dignified with the
consciousness of high birth, had in him been unfolded simultaneously. He
was a prince, by birth a prince; and he wished to reign, only that good
men might be good without obstruction. Pleasing in form, polished by
nature, courteous from the heart, he was meant to be the pattern of
youth and the joy of the world.

"Without any prominent passion, his love for Ophelia was a still
presentiment