Sir Frank Benson's Hamlet unmistakably delighted his audience at the Opera House, Manchester, recently, writes the "Manchester Guardian." And no wonder, His is the Hamlet that, of all in our time, has spoilt least in a play in which all acting must spoil something, however much it may animate and illuminate the rest. Time has also made it one of the most important Hamlets in the history of the stage. It was conceived in the heyday of Irving, Booth, and Salvini; it represents, along. with much original. power, all that an actor of uncommon intellectual force judged to be best worth assimilating in those mo-montons performances. It preceded and it has outlived the Hamlets of Beerbohm Tree and of Sir J. Forbes-Robertson—if the latter will continue to grieve us by not acting. Now it remains by far the best Hamlet accessible to English playgoers.
Like the elder Irving's Shylock it has become one of the representative pieces of modern English acting, and, like everything of the great elder actors, it is moving and memorable in spite of mannorisms which anyone can point to as defects. The occasional sudden uncouthness of a gesture or movement, the sometimes capricious distribution of stress in the phrasing, the dissonance sometimes occurring in the fine voice—these and the other peculiarities noted by Mr. J. E. Agate in the most vivid extant description of Sir Frank Benson's art are a kind of fault. But it is characteristic of romantic acting to be splendid in spite of faults. Irving, the greatest romantic in living memory, was full of them.. Romantic acting seems as if, like Gothic stained glass, were all the better for a few minor flaws, impurities, and bub. bles in the material. So we may not wish that Sir Frank Benson's art were without its wild tricks, its surprising moments of abruptness and harshness. The whole is a splendid achievement, % Hamlet noble in bearing, imposing in intellect, always intensely conceived by the actor and living to the spectator.
The actor was well supported. We suspect something unsound in the tradition: which makes our Ophelias blonde and pink and child-like to a degree, and almost breathless with super-innocence. The young woman who rounded on Laertes as Ophelia did when he gave her his early "pi jaw" was no pretty Tittle fool, nor would Hamlet have fallen in love with one. But tradition is mighty, and Miss Moliv Sainton, in her early scenes, effaced herself a good deal in conformity with it.
She was good in the mad scene. So was Mr. Phillip Wade as the First Gravedigger and as Polonius. But it is tragic to sea how much the comedy of the
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