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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
beauties and new meanings. Exquisite
taste, as well as acumen, constantly appears
in an unerring sense of the relation of each
speech to every other, to every personage
and the whole play, and in the subordina-
tion of his own part, when, as in the first
long scene with the Ghost, a temporary
effacement of himself is due to the artistic
needs of the situation. The melancholy of
the Prince is of a sort which Mr. Irving is
singularly well fitted to reproduce, through
the cast of his countenance, the quality of
his voice in its low tones, and the bent
of his temperament; and with Hamlet's
habits of introspection and metaphysical
speculation the actor's sympathy is most
intimate and profound.
It must be remembered, as a practical
qualification of all which has been said of
Mr. Irving's intensity, artistic perception,
and mental force, that these noble qualities
are sorely let and hindered, in their opera-
tion upon the stage, by the faults of style
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