But then, whether Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved so dearly, is never thought on.

The truth is, that in all such deep affections as had subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a stock of _supererogatory love_, (if I may venture to use the expression,) which in any great grief of heart, especially where that which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of indulgence upon the grieved party to express itself, even to its heart's dearest object, in the language of a temporary alienation; but it is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance of anger,--love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown: but such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the real face of absolute aversion,--of irreconcilable alienation.

It may be said he puts on the madman; but then he should only so far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own real distraction will give him leave; that is, incompletely, imperfectly; not in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of his art, or as Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry players." I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which Shakspeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to differ from that which the audience receive from those of other writers; and, _they being in themselves essentially so different from all others_, I must conclude that there is something in the nature of acting which levels all distinctions.

And, in fact, who does not speak indifferently of the Gamester and of Macbeth as fine stage-performances, and praise the Mrs.Beverley in the same way as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs.S.?
Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they less liked than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than Desdemona?
Are they not spoken of and remembered in the same way?
Is not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one as in the other?
Did not Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of shining, in every drawling tragedy that his wretched day produced,--the productions of the Hills, and the Murphys, and the Browns,--and shall he have that honor to dwell in our minds forever as an inseparable concomitant with Shakspeare?
A kindred mind! O who can read that affecting sonnet of Shakspeare which alludes to his profession as a player:-- "Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public custom breeds-- Thence comes it that my name receives a brand; And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."-- Or that other confession:-- "Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to thy view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear--" Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our sweet Shakspeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one that, by every tradition of him, appears to have been as mere a player as ever existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest players' vices,--envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause; one who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of the women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial tricks and stratagems and finesse; that any resemblance should be dreamed of between him and Shakspeare,--Shakspeare, who, in the plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could with that noble modesty, which we can neither imitate nor appreciate, express himself thus of his own sense of his own defects:-- "Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possest; Desiring _this man's art, and that man's scope_." I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare?
A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the rest of them, that "With their darkness durst affront his light," have foisted into the acting plays of Shakspeare?
I believe it impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for Shakspeare, and have condescended to go through that interpolated scene in Richard the Third, in which Richard tries to break his wife's heart by telling her he loves another woman, and says, "if she survives this she is immortal." Yet I doubt not he delivered this vulgar stuff with as much anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine parts: and for acting, it is as well calculated as any.

But we have seen the part of Richard lately produce great fame to an actor by his manner of playing it; and it lets us into the secret of acting, and of popular judgments of Shakspeare derived from acting.