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at once scourge him for former guilt, and urge him to further enormities. We can never forget the rueful horror of his look, which by strong exertion he endeavours to conceal, when on the morning succeeding the murder he receives Lennox and Macduff in the ante-chamber of Duncan. His efforts to appear composed, his endeavours to assume the attitude and appearance of one listening to Lennox's account of the external terrors of the night, while in fact he is expecting the alarm to arise within the royal apartment, formed a most astonishing piece of playing. Kemble's countenance seemed altered by the sense of internal horror, and had a cast of that of Count Ugolino in the dungeon, as painted by Reynolds. When Macbeth felt himself obliged to turn towards Lennox and reply to what he had been saying, you saw him, like a man awaking from a fit of absence, endeavour to recollect at least the general tenor of what had been said, and it was some time ere he could bring out the general reply, ' 'Twas a rough night. Those who have had the good fortune to see Kemble and Mrs. Siddons in Macbeth and his lady, may be satisfied they have witnessed the highest perfection of the dramatic art. There cannot have been, and we fear never will be, anything to compare to it. Their King John and Lady Constance are equally beyond imitation, and must be forgotten ere others can obtain an high degree of applause in these characters.

But it was not only in such parts as fell precisely within his line, and which he seemed to hold by birthright, that Kemble delighted the public. There were others, appearing to be beyond his proper territory, which he invaded, nevertheless, and conquered; amongst which was the character of the headlong and hasty Percy,

A bare-brained Hotspur, guided by a spleen.'

One would have thought, a priori, that the grave, studious, contemplative actor, who personated Hamlet to the life, could scarcely have assumed the rapidity and energy, and hurry, and reckless indulgence of his humour, which are among the chief ingredients of Henry Percy's character. But Kemble's profound study of the author enabled him to seize on the distinguishing features of that great historical portrait. It cannot now be known whether Shakspeare gathered from tradition, or himself conferred on Hotspur the quality of

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Speaking thick which nature made his blemish.' But Kemble contrived to show how well that hurried and impeded articulation suited the irritability of the character. It was in the speech in which Hotspur loses the key-note of what he desires to say, by forgetting the name of a place

Dublin in 1783, where he was received with approbation: His sister, Mrs. Siddons, had now displayed for several months before the public that blaze of varied excellence which was never before equalled, and certainly will never be surpassed. Beautiful as an angel, she seemed gifted also with super-human powers. The horrors and the sorrows of the scene were alike her own; the boldest trembled, the wisest wondered, the most hard-hearted and the most selfish wept ere they were aware.

Her unrivalled excellence naturally led the managers to inquire respecting that brother who began already to be called the Great Kemble. There is a ludicrous story, however, of the meaning of the epithet being mistaken by the person intrusted with the nego ciation, who instead of our friend is said to have sent to the metropolis his jolly brother Stephen as the greatest of the name who was going.

The mistake, if it ever took place, was soon rectified, and on the 30th of September, 1783, John Philip Kemble made his first appearance at Drury Lane in the character of Hamlet.

It cannot be denied that this extraordinary conception of Shakspeare is one of the boldest, most striking, and most effective parts in the drama, and yet it is invested with so much obscurity, that it may be played in twenty different ways without the critic being able to say with certainty which best expresses the sense of the author. Hamlet unites in his single person a variety of attributes, by bringing any of which more forward or throwing others farther into the back-ground, the shading of the character is effectually changed. Hamlet is the predestined avenger called on to this task by a supernatural voice-he is a prince resenting the intrusion of his uncle into his mother's bed and his father's throne. He is a son devoted to the memory of one parent and to the person of the other, and yet, to do justice to his murdered father's memory, he is compelled to outrage, with the most cutting reproaches, the ears of his guilty mother. Wittenberg has given him philosophy and the habits of criticism-nature has formed him social and affectionate disappointment and ill-concealed resentment of family injuries have tinged him with misanthropy-the active world has given him all its accomplishments.

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form.'

To all these peculiar attributes must be added his love for Ophelia, and something which resembles an incipient touch of insanity; for this, after all, is necessary to apologize and account for some parts of his conduct. All these exist in Prince Hamlet,

but

but the art of the performer is to distinguish the proper or most striking mode of exhibiting them. The author has done little to help him in the management of the piece, which as a story indicates nothing decisive respecting the real character of Hamlet. He does not resemble Richard or Macbeth, or most of Shakspeare's other distinguished characters, who show themselves and purposes not by their words and sentiments only, but by their actions, and whose actions therefore are the best commentaries on their characters and motives. On the contrary, Hamlet being passive almost through the whole piece, and only hurried into action in its conclusion, does nothing by which we can infer the precise meaning of much that he says. There exists therefore a latitude about the representation of Hamlet, which scarcely belongs to that of any other character in the drama. It consists of many notes, and the dwelling upon or the slurring of any of them totally changes the effect of the air.

It is natural to expatiate on these peculiarities in the character, because Kemble in representing it was to encounter at once the shade of the murthered King of Denmark, and, in the mind's eye of the audience, that of the lost Garrick. The young performer had never seen and could not imitate Garrick. He. was relieved from that great stumbling-block in the path of a novice the temptation to copy some honoured predecessor. Those who are subjected to this temptation and give way to it, seldom rise above respectability in their performances. They are admitted to play the line of characters possessed by the wellraced actor' who has left the stage, but it is merely in the character of substitutes: those who aim at great eminence must show originality of conception.

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Originality however in a novice has its perils; and it was often objected to Kemble, that in playing Shakspeare's best-known characters he frequently sought to give them effect by a mode of delivery and action daringly opposed to what the audience had been used to. This, in the beginning of his career, was often hardly received by pedantic critics, who had become so much bigoted to one style of acting that they were unable to tolerate any departure from it. Such venturing on new ground is no doubt a hazardous task, and demands both the powers and perseverance of decided genius; and Garrick was, in his time, equally censured as an innovator on the solemn and pompous manner of Booth and Betterton. But were it possible to promulgate and enforce a scale of the tones in which each speech of Hamlet or any other character should be delivered, or to issue a tariff of the emphasis to which each striking passage should be subjected, it is evident we should destroy one great source of the pleasure we receive from the stage

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namely,

namely, that of comparing and deciding between the different species of efforts which rivals in the scenic art bring to illustrate the same character.

For this Hamlet offers a fair field, and Kemble entered on it with characteristic courage and skill. Beginning already to act upon the principles of dramatic criticism, he discarded the alterations which Garrick had ventured to introduce into the works of Shakspeare; and which Mr. Boaden justly calls feeble and trashy. The following is an accurate and pleasing description of Kemble as he then was stepping forwards to offer himself as a rival to Garrick, and disdaining all that had interposed between them. 'His person seemed to be finely formed, and his manners princely; but on his brow hung the weight of some intolerable woe.' Apart from the expression called up by the situation of Hamlet, there struck me to be in him a peculiar and personal fitness for tragedy. What others assumed, seemed to be inherent in Kemble. Native, and to the manner born," he looked an abstraction, if I may so say, of the characteristics of tragedy.

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The first great point of remark was, that his Hamlet was decidedly original. He had seen no great actor whom he could have copied. His style was formed by his own taste or judgment, or rather grew out of the peculiar properties of his person and his intellectual habits. He was of a solemn and deliberate temperament-his walk was always slow, and his expression of countenance contemplative-his utterance rather tardy for the most part, but always finely articulate, and in common parlance seemed to proceed rather from organization than voice.'-Boaden's Memoirs of Kemble, vol. i. p. 92.

It must strike the dramatic reader at once that a more complete contrast to the former Roscius could not appear, in almost every point, than in this new candidate for the honours of the buskin. Garrick was short though well formed, airy and light in all his movements, possessed of a countenance capable of the most acute or the most stolid, the most tragic or the most ridiculous expression. Kemble, on the contrary, was tall and stately, his person on a scale suited for the stage, and almost too large for a private apartment, with a countenance like the finest models of the antique, and motions and manners corresponding to the splendid cast of his form and features. Mirth, when he exhibited it, never exceeded a species of gaiety chastened with gravity; his smile seemed always as if it were the rare inhabitant of that noble countenance. There was unquestionably great sweetness of expression in that smile, but it indicated more of benevolence than of gaietythe momentary stooping of a mind usually strung to a serious mood to the joy which enlivened the meaner natures around him.

Even the habits of life and manners peculiar to these two great performers intimated such a strong difference in their characters

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as must necessarily have greatly influenced their taste in the art. Garrick was what is called a man of fashion, desirous to maintain his place as such among the great, among whom his talents made him a welcome associate. But in mixing with them he paid them a sort of homage. He was desirous to procure their notice more than a man of his commanding genius ought perhaps to have been. The situation was a difficult one, and he is represented to have been something too eager to show off and entertain the company, as one who had some tax to pay for being where he was when in the society of men of rank and eminence. It is to be sure an ungracious behaviour on the part of what is technically called a lion, to refuse gruffly to show his jaws and extend his talons when he chuses to enter into mixed company.

For if he should as lion come in strife

Into such place 'twere pity on his life.'

But this is a failing of a very different order from that overeager love of gaining interest, which will court the attention of the foot-boy, if it cannot fix that of the master.

Of all men, John Kemble, though not destitute of his share of vanity, was most averse from this peculiar mode of drawing attention: his nature revolted from courting display and obsequiously condescending to be what has been vulgarly called the fiddle of the company. He took a ready and agreeable part in the general conversation. And when it turned naturally upon his own art, he always showed himself willing to entertain and instruct the company from the funds of experience and study, as well as the original conceptions of his own genius. But he never, in the language of the old dramatists, came aloft or showed tricks from Tripoli.' He never stooped to be the amusing and exhibiting man of the company. He never even read or recited for the amusement of the circle; and those who desired the pleasure of his society could only obtain it on the condition of his being an equal contributor, and no more, to the social enjoyment of the day. Perhaps he even carried this point of etiquette a little too far. But on these terms he enjoyed the familiar friendship of many of the first families in England.

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He was a frequent and favourite guest at Bentley Priory, which was then the resort of the most distinguished part of the fashionable world, Its noble owner, the late Marquis of Abercorn, has been so long with the dead, that to do justice to his character, much misrepresented in some points during his life, can be ascribed to no motive which interest or adulation could suggest. He was a man highly gifted by nature, and whose talents had been improved by sedulous attention to an excellent education. If he had remained a Commoner, it was the opinion

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