able to formulate it. The gist of it is as follows: Something must happen on the stage that interests the audience; otherwise, they will go away.

As for the old, sacred apparatus of criticism, of which Shakespeare knew nothing, we need make no long delay over its theories. One or two of his tragedies can, with a little stretching of the tentpins, be dragged in under the roof of classic and pseudo-classic criticism. For instance, we can say of "King Lear" that the theme is Greek; for, as everyone knows, the regular theme of Greek tragedy was the punishment of self-will, of insolence and impiety. Now the play of "King Lear" deals with this same idea-self-will-seen from the opposite side. The play represents the triumph of humility, and Lear is a reformed tyrant. We can say of "King Lear" that it is a single, grand symphonic poem: the attention of everyone is held to one single idea during the entire evening. The author takes the audience into his confidence; the climaxes are foreseen and led up to.

In observing these matters, we lull ourselves into a belief that something is known about the laws of the drama. If, however, we turn to "Hamlet," we find that Shakespeare has produced effects as remarkable as those of "King Lear" by the use of a technique that seems to be entirely different. Shakespeare indeed improvises his technique. It is never twice alike, and he is as great when he appears to be violating all the supposed rules of dramatic writing as he is when he seems to be following at least some of them.

"Hamlet" is the most famous play in the world.

It excites the learned as much as it delights the vulgar. It is the most stageable invention ever put together by the wit of man; and yet nobody quite knows what the theme of it is, or what the moral is

if it has a moral. The execution of the work is so brilliant that it dazzles us, and we cannot see just how much is structure and how much ornament. The world has been searching for two hundred years for a bit of smoked glass through which to look at "Hamlet." Its popularity on the stage is easy to understand: it is the richest variety show in existence. You have a murder and a ghost to begin with, and in the course of the play you have seven more murders and a suicide. You have Ophelia, Polonius, a play within a play, an insurrection, the gravediggers, a funeral, a hand-to-hand fight in a grave, a pretended fencing-bout which is really a duel, and, finally, the grand collapse of the whole kingdom, the extinction of its royal family, and the martial entrance of a conqueror who views a stage on which dead bodies are piled.

Certainly if such a feast of excitement does not satisfy the theatre-goer, nothing will; for these scenes drift by him as in a dream, and are each so interesting and startling, so witty and amusing in themselves, so full of tears and heart-break, that the onlooker never discovers that the play has no action in the dramatic sense of the word. Nothing has happened in the Story-of-Hamlet's-Revenge between the first act, where the theme is so gorgeously announced, and the very end when the King is killed.

What is it, then, that holds all these thrilling scenes together, and makes people watch and gape

and wonder what is coming next, and go night after night to see a story which is merely the dramatization of a mental paralysis, a series of actions that depict inaction? If Shakespeare had shown his scenario and explained his plan to any competent and instructed playwright, the scholar would have said:

"But my dear fellow, this will never do. You begin the play as if it were a ghost-fate-drama, and then your ghost and his story are completely forgotten. The actor who plays the ghost goes home at the end of the third act. That ghost ought to appear in the climax at the end. But it seems that you have just used the ghost to help get your play under way. That's not a proper way to treat a ghost. Then you kill off your heroine in the middle: your heroine, like your ghost, is a mere makeweight. Then, you must know, that the first rule is that a playwright should never equivocate: he must explain each step. But with you everything is equivocation. Is Hamlet really mad? Does Ophelia drown herself out of grief for her father or out of love for Hamlet? Did the Queen know that her first husband was murdered? Moreover, you should never surprise an audience. In this play you jounce your audience from one surprise to another. The first is when Hamlet changes his mind after seeing the ghost, and suddenly determines not to tell Horatio about it; this amazes the pit. The audience is surprised again when he changes his mind. the next morning and confides in Horatio. It is surprised by the murder of Polonius, by the banishment of Hamlet, by his return, by every incident in

the play. Nothing is prepared for. Then again, why kill off that amusing Polonius? Then again, you make your hero commit three cold-blooded murders. Why did you do that? It destroys all sympathy for him. The play is an amateur play, my boy.'

What is the single thought that lies behind the drama of "Hamlet"? Let us listen to the gossip of the audience at the close of the play, and while the people are walking home to supper. "Hamlet" excites the same emotion in all minds. Goethe and Coleridge and Victor Hugo are talking about the same question that agitates the peanut gallery : Why could n't the young man avenge his father's murder? Surely the brain and consciousness of these listeners must have been undergoing stroke after stroke from some divine apparatus, the blows must have been falling in the same place on some harmonic anvil, or this tremendous unitary effect on the audience could not have been produced.

Is the continuity of inaction such an idea as can hold an audience spellbound, when exhibited in various vivid scenes of melodrama, each of which calls for some action that does not come? “To be or not to be," which the world has seized on as the key to the play, would lead one to think so. The unity in "Hamlet" consists in the succession of episodes in which Hamlet always disappoints expectation. The man cannot act, but only feel, reflect, and plan. He is, however, constantly exciting us into a belief that he is about to do something; but the action he takes is never a deed; it is a mere gesture. His actions consist in (1) the ruse to catch

the conscience of a king; (2) the murder of Polonius at a moment when he cannot see Polonius; (3) the forging of a document that is to cost his schoolmates their lives; and (4) the murder of the King, to which he seems spurred at the last moment by personal vengeance and at a moment when he knows he is dying of the King's poison. These deeds are not deeds, but spasms.

The miracle in the play is the fact that we see the same spectre behind and through each climax of the melodrama. We do not know quite what that figure is, yet it is terrific. The same spectre is flashed into our minds through a succession of different poetic mists: we feel its identity, yet we cannot name the wraith. The variety in the drama is due to the different kinds of poetic atmosphere with which Shakespeare has clothed his spectre under different circumstances. Perhaps it is the isolation of Hamlet's mind that is being exhibited in each case - an isolation somehow connected with his incapacity for action.

Let us consider the different kinds of poetic mystery in which Hamlet's spirit is enveloped in the several scenes of the play. You have, in the first place, the two great tragic scenes: the opening scene with the Ghost, and Hamlet's interview with his mother at the end of the third act. Both of these scenes are drenched in precisely the same kind of poetry. They have an atmosphere of their own, which appears nowhere else in the play. You have, next, Hamlet's wit and banter, the badinage with which he meets all the minor personages of the piece. This is sometimes sharp, often good-natured,