Page:The London Magazine, volume 9 (January–June 1824).djvu/474

462 has chalked out the path which ghosts should walk, as strictly as though they were about to do some spiritual-Barclay match of 1000 miles in 1000 hours;—but, having myself devoted much time and thought to Shakespeare's ghosts, and finding my conclusions to differ materially from those of Mr. Umbra, I am tempted to examine his essay in several of its parts, and to offer my simple notions on the sort of bodies which ghosts ought to be. Mr. Umbra would have them poor, airified, thin things, seen at a distance, and gliding to and fro on feet which “prate not of their whereabout;”—he would shoe them with felt, dress them in an reign of blue gauze, and send them about, with nothing but the wind on their stomachs, to walk the night. I am not with Mr. Umbra, and, respectfully be it spoken, I think Shakspeare himself would protest (could he be consulted) he intended the senior Mr. Hamlet, the defunct Mr. J. Cesar, Henry and Company at Bosworth, and Banquo at the banquet, to be all solid, substantial, positive people,—spirits in good case,—not exactly Lamberts of the air, but “the substantials, Sir Giles, the substantials;” certainly not a set of whining vaporous Master Slenders and Master Silences, sneaking about the earth as though they were after henroosts and orchards. I am of Shakspeare’s opinion;—and therefore let good-man Umbra look to his Essay! I shall not only entirely overthrow all his rules for famished ghosts, but shall show how incorrect he is in his ideas of spiritual attire. If indeed there is any thing on earth I undetstand, it is ghostly tailorship! Oh! I could devise such a pair of breeches for a spirit, as Banquo would jump at: they should be made of a stuff to wear well—everlasting, cut by the shears of Fate!

I have little to say in reply to the question of “which character in Shakspeare is most difficult to play?” The Fool in Lear would puzzle the Fool in Life, but a sensible man might make something of the part: Hamlet, played “as he ought to be, not as he is,” might perhaps be an answer to the question. The ghosts I think, enacted according to my infallible rules, are perhaps the easiest of adequate representation. At any rate there ae a hundred characters more difficult;—Puck, Titania, Mustard-seed, Macbeth, Pease-blossom, Coriolanus, the Witches, &c. Mr. Umbra would except from the liabiliy to answer the question, several of these characters as utterly unrepresentable; but surely it is not more difficult for Ariel to take a ground floor in a cowslip, than for the Ghost in Hamlet to sink in the earth, or to smell the morning air. “The King” is supposed to smell the morning air;—and, Ariel may be supposed to sneak into a flower. Or proper cowslips for the occasion can be had at Covent-Garden;—cowslips as capacious as cabriolets: or indeed very little creatures may be hired for Ariels. If fit bodies could not easily be obtained for certain characters, Romeo and Juliet could not be performed for want of an Apothecary; neither could Macbeth proceed in the paucity of a Fleance. But to the business in hand.

I pass over the general remarks on the poetical beauty of the Ghost in Hamlet,—Which I believe no reader can deny; and come to the rules which Mr. Umbra lays down for all future Ghost-players, and which rules I shall take leave to demolish one by one, and with little remorse,—for can there be a more heinous sin than to erect a lying direction-post in our spiritual paths. Mr. Umbra’s first rule is as follows:—

In the first place: under the present regime, the ghost marches in a mathematical right line across the stage; within truncheon’s length of the foot-lights. Now this is about as ill-judged a proceeding as it is an unnecessary one. By this means, whatever unhappy defects the body corporal of the ghost may labour under, whether it be redundant in point of flesh, or curtailed in point of stature, whether it be supported on pins or pillars,—whatever be its defects, they are sure to be glaringly exhibited, while thus paraded before the audience, wantonly paraded, in the full blaze of the burners, and for the whole breadth of the stage. Besides, any lapse in the gait, a trip or a faux-pas, any flaw or fissure in the panoply, an ill-fitting greave, or a basin-shaped helmet, nay the very crackling of the buckram, can be recognized with the utmost facility, whilst the Apparition thus stalks, upon the very brow, I may say, of the orchestra, near enough to shake hands if he chose it, with his