Page:The London Magazine, volume 9 (January–June 1824).djvu/382

370 systems have been overthrown: at the light of true philosophy, spirits, demons, and apparitions, disappeared. Few play-goers believe, now-a-days, in the existence of ghosts; in our sceptical times, the appearance of such airy beings has become quite a rarity. They scarcely durst even show their faces in their old haunts, the nursery, the kitchen, or the cottage; church-yards are beginning to be considered as little better than green fields with broad stones scattered over them, shrouds as nothing but sheets, and coffins but clumsy compositions of deal boards, tin, and twelve-penny nails. This change of public opinion has rendered what was never very easy to the performer, superlatively difficult. It has now become a matter of exquisite delicacy to prevent the Ghost in Hamlet or Macbeth (especially the former, who is vocal), from exciting feelings either of offence or risibility in the audience. More so, even, than with respect to the Witches; for any ugly old ill-tempered woman has nothing to do but get a-stride of a broomstick, and she may still be esteemed as a witch if she chooses. A dead man, on the other hand, has to break through six feet of mother earth, before we can be induced to set him down for a ghost. The appearance of a Witch is therefore not so obnoxious to splenetic remark as that of a ghost. Both are, however, very apt to excite merriment in an audience; I have frequently heard those around me laugh, positively laugh, at the entrée of the Ghost in Hamlet, the noblest, the most pathetic character ever delineated by a poet. It is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous; this which is terrifically grand and in the closet, becomes often highly ludicrous on the stage. But as if the natural difficulties of this character were not enough; as if the advance of knowledge, and consequent change of public opinion to which I have alluded, had not rendered the introduction of ghosts upon the stage sufficiently hazardous to the gravity of the play, and an affair of the utmost nicety to the performer;—by the force of mismanagement, and the liberal exercise of bad taste, if it be not rather the effect of unpardonable neglect, the Ghost is converted into a stumbling-block, over which the genius of Shakspeare himself does not enable the actor to ride triumphant. Yet I cannot persuade myself but that a very little judgement, and a very little attention bestowed this matter by the managers of our theatres and the gentlemen upon whom ghost-playing usually devolves—would remedy the evil I complain of in a great degree. Although it may be impossible to do the character complete justice, it is certainly capable of a much more adequate representation than it ever obtains upon the modern stage. Under this impression, I beg leave to subjoin a hint for the consideration of our two great Houses in Drury Lane and Covent Garden, which I think they might improve to their own and the public advantage. A new discipline might be introduced with considerable effect and very little trouble, as far as regards ghost-playing, which would, I think, be found of equal benefit to the author, manager, performer, and spectator. I must premise that with respect to the physical qualifications of the performers themselves, however, the nostrums I am about to submit boast no secret plastic power whatever; they will not enable a dwarf to stretch himself into a giant, nor a rosy prelatical pot-bellied son of Thalia to reduce himself to a fine cadaverous, ghost-playing condition of person; they will not endue leathern lungs and brazen thorax with the power of emitting the harmonious, shrill-sweet, vanishing voice which belongs to the spiritual tribe: but where the qualifications for ghost-playing are not absolutely of a negative description, the following remarks may perhaps be of some service. They chiefly relate to the Ghost in Hamlet, but may easily be rendered of general application; and I expect that no gentleman will hereafter think of treading the boards in a white sheet, crustaceous panoply, or flesh-coloured pantaloons, without having previously consulted the, by which title I have chosen to designate the discipline prescribed in the following paragraphs.

In the first place: under the present regime, the ghost marches in a mathematical right line across the stage, within truncheon’s length of