Page:The London Magazine, volume 9 (January–June 1824).djvu/380

368 THE GHOST-PLAYER'S GUIDE,

often heard the question proposed, amongst the characters in Shakspeare’s plays, which is the most difficult to be personated adequately? When proposed to me, I have invariably answered,—Hamlet, or the Fool in Lear. Others would perhaps substitute Falstaff or Caliban; but the former is merely a strong portrait, or caricature, of nature, and the latter but a low estate of it. Many men are Falstaffs in Person and disposition; the poet supplies them with wit and words; so that the character may be approximately, if not adequately, represented. Caliban is man in a state of brutality, nor was the old world “exhausted” for his character. I once knew a perfect Caliban; he was a slave to the servants of the school where I was educated; and my recollection of him affords me a practical proof of the wonderful extent of observation which has always been ascribed to the poet. The being of whom I speak, was not an idiot, but was active in body and cunning in mind. His propensities were brutal, his ideas grovelling, his manners and person disagreeable; he was prone to imprecation, conformed himself only to the whip, knew little of language, but was fluent as far as he did know; though indolent, he had none of the listlessness which distinguishes fools and naturals, he was in fact a human brute,—a perfect Caliban. Plebeian life will furnish us with many instances of qu proxim Calibans. So that the only” difficulty in the stage-representation of such a being, is to find a man who has understanding sufficient to perform the character, and presence of mind to dissemble it throughout the performance. But Hamlet is an indefinite character, and the Fool an inconsistent one. I am far from asserting that the character of the Prince of Denmark is untrue to nature: on the contrary, the very uncertainty and unfixedness of his disposition makes him peculiarly mortal. It is an arduous task however to represent the wild variety of his character, and to give an appearance of identity to that which is ever changing from the first act to the last, and is left undetermined by the catastrophe. As to the Fool, no simpleton ever coined such wit, no such wit was ever found in a genuine fool, which the poet manifestly declares his fool to be. Hence the difficulty of the performance; especially in these civilized times, when the office of fool is never professedly sustained, and must therefore appear unintelligible and unnatural to an audience. But however serious the obstacles may be, which both these characters present to the actor, in the ay of perfect delineation, they vanish before those presented by another:—the Ghost in Hamlet is indisputably the true answer to the question proposed, it is by far the most difficult character in all Shakspeare to be adequately personated. Indeed I am surprised at my own obliviousness in not recollecting that this must be the case; for it is evident that such a part being so remote from humanity, the difficulty of adequately representing it, by a human being, must be insurmountable. The particulars which make up the characters of Falstaff and Hamlet, though they may never have existed together in any one man, have severally existed in different men. The same may be said of the Fool, and a due combination of simplicity and satire might perhaps be displayed by an ingenious actor, so as to give a verisimilitude to this inconsistent personage. Even Caliban has a congeniality of nature and disposition, in the lowest degree, with us mortals; it is much easier for an actor to embrutify his manners to the ferodity of a savage, than to refine them to the perfection with which we invest a spirit. But the attributes which we impute to a spirit, are many of them neither to be met with in one, nor in different men, such for instance as ubiquity, or the power of evanescence, impassiveness of