short notice” by tin! Complete steel—and complete steel only, I say! And let the Ghost ring his iron heel to the ground as he passes stately by. The airy vision should have the power of its fleshy forefather threefold!—and the steel attire, so divinely inhabited, ought to stalk by with additional energies. It should have the effect of a suit of armour going by steam!
Ham. Armd, say you?
Hor. Arm’d, my Lord!
Ham. From top to toe ?
Hor. My Lord, from head to foot !
A ghost, so armed and so potential, was never intended to be a noiseless vapour moving about indistinctly and irresolutely. He is, throughout the play, described as a spirit awful, lofty of port, majestic, and imposing of gait! “We do it wrong, says Marcellus, “being so majestical, to offer it this show of violence.” And Horatio appeals to it, not as to a flimsy half-seen dim-armoured sprite,—
What art thou, that usurp’st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form,
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march?
Again, Marcellus says:
Thus twice before, and just at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch !
And Horatio recollects the particular suit of armour the apparition wears, which he could never do under the abominable gauze with which Mr. Umbra would enshroud it:
Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polack on the ice.
I trust I have made it clear, on incontrovertible evidence, that the Ghost in Hamlet should be fat and imposing, that he should wear real armour, and keep as much in the eye of the lamps as possible.
It would, perhaps, be invidious to recommend any particular actor for this part; but, until a stouter gentleman of equal talent is seen, I shall be content with Mr. Egerton, who weighs somewhere about eighteen stone , and is of a serious cast. He could have performed the part without stuffing is gone; but I should think a good ghost might be got from the City.
The concluding passage in Mr. Umbra’s letter runs thus:
To the above remarks I have but this to add, with a particular view to the play of Hamlet,—that the manner in which, I have sometimes heard the Ghost utter the word “Swear!” when the prince invites Horatio and Marcellus to swear upon his sword, is a infraction of the decorum which should always be observed on the stage; it is bellowed through the side-scene by some fellow or other with a throat like a trombone, or in the tone of an enraged alderman. The voice should come from under the stage, as the text plainly expresses, and the greatest possible care should be taken to manage this scene, so as that the audience shall not laugh, instead of quake, through its representation.
I have yet to learn why a ghost’s voice should be so exceedingly thin, airy, and tremulous. Hamlet does not remark that his father’s voice is changed; and I therefore should incline to a full, wholesome, and manly voice for the King. Indeed, allowing a little for the solemnity of the hour, and conceding a paleness to the features, and a fixed lustre to the eye, I am not for having the Ghost vary a tittle from the gentleman whom he is destined to represent. I do not attach exactly the same meaning to the word “Swear!” here that all the commentators do; indeed, I find several allusions to the King’s habit of swearing scattered throughout the play, as though Shakspeare would intimate to us that he was rather addicted to it in his lifetime.[1] Horatio says, “I'll cross it, though it bl—t me,” by which he plainly shows that he remembered the consequence of crossing his Majesty. Hamlet himself exclaims on seeing him, “Be thou a spirit of health or goblin d—d!” as much as to convey that he would know his father by the reply: and he further inquires whether he brings “airs from Heaven, or bl—ts from Hell!” This is delicate ground to touch upon, and I therefore but touch
- ↑ I understand it is clearly shewn by several old tattered Danish manuscripts, that King Hamlet was descended from Otho or Oatho the Great.
