The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-23 00:00:00

FRANCE.

BOURSE, May 21.—The market is rather heavy,
and prices have slightly receded. Threes, for the
Account, are DOW at 66f. 70c. Mobilier have also
decline 3, and are last quoted at 1,156 f. 25c. Rail-
way Market quiet, but pretty firm. Tile market
closed as follows :

41 per Cents 93 25
Do. end month —
3 per Cents
Do. end month 66 .65
Credit Mobilier 1148 75
Do, end month 1151
Bank Shares 3352 50
Credit k oncier 121,0
Roman
RA IL

Italian Loan 69 05
Jo. end mouth 69 05
New ditto
Do. end mouth —
Russian
Austrian -
Spanish Threes., • 51 50
Dome Debt . . 49 75
Deferred
VANS.
Cash. Account.
Orleans BB2 50 .. 882 50
Northern
Lyons and Mediterranean 880 883 75
New ditto 877 50
S3uthern
Western
Eastern
Sardinian
Austrian
Lombard
North of Spain
Saragossa„ 568 75 .. 562 50
Ditto to Barcelona • •

the Municipal Boaid, in succession to Major A. H.
Curtin, deceased,.
" It is expected that Mr. A. B. Warden, CS.,
will succeed Mr. Erskine as Judge of the High
Court, Bombay. _ _

"The scarcity and dearness of grain is so great
at Neemuch and some other parts of Central India
that a famine is feared to be imminent.

" Lady Frere, wife of the Governor of Bombay
arrived here from England in the Peninsular and
Oriental Company's mail steamer Benares, on the
26th inst.

" The ship Shannon (Dunbar), from Liverpool,
arrived at Bombay on the 21st inst., after a passage
of six months. Tho ail mate and four of the
crew are in custody, charged with having conspired
to deprive Captain Dunbar of the command of the
ship and to cast her away.
" We have no news of importance from Cabul, or
from any other part of Central Asia."

THE ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE,

Fechter as Hamlet, Prlnc,` of Denmark,
The long expected and eagerly looked for revival
of Mr. Fechter's Hamlet " came off" at last, like
one of the Great Events of the Season as it is, on
Saturday evening. In many respects this, the
indisputable masterpiece of Shakspere'e all-iecom-
parable genius, has never been more magnificently
put upon the stage than it has now at last been put
upon the stage of the Lyceum Theatre undels Mr.
Fechter's management. An immense and, brilliant
audience crowded stalls, pit, boxes, and gallery, from
the floor of the house to within an inch or two
of the ceiling, on Saturday, in visible evidence
of the curiosity awakened in regard to this grand
revival. One or two of the scenic effects—it should
be observed at once—scenic effects from which so
much had been anticipated—fully realised our
expectations. In one of them, the extraordinary
character of which had been whispered about
beforehand (evidently erroneously), we were
doomed, it is true, to be disappointed. The rumoar
in regard to this purely supposititious stage effect,
having been, that upon the castle platform where
Hamlet is seen following in the path taken by the
Ghost, the latter would have passed over the snowy
battlements without leaving any trace whatever of
its footprints, the footprints of the Prince in pursuit
of the ghastly apparition being at the same time
clearly discernible. Nothing of this, however, was
witnessed, of course, on Saturday, any more than
the once.talked-of application of the famous Dircks-
and-Pepper optical contrivance, with .a view to the
more vivid realisation of the spectral illusion in the
ghost-scenes of the great Tragedy. Applications
of eccentric contrivances of this exceptional and
even extraordinary character might, however,
not unjustly have been reprobated by the truer
Shaksperian students as partaking overmuch of a
tendency to mere clap-trap. It is probably judi-
cious, therefore, that nothing of the kind was even
attempted. In the more legitimate care for the mice
en-scene, however, at the Lyceum, everything that
could reasonably be desired has been cared for with
a hand lavish sometimes to an excess of absolute
munificence. The scenery by Telbin, always
effective, was in several instances almost magically
illusive. The platform scenes in the first act, and
the graveyard scene in the last were worthy of
the admiration with which they were welcomed.
But the grandest display of all was in the heart of
the tragedy, in the third act, that is, where the play
within the play is performed in the grand Hall of
the Palace before the majesty of Denmark. It was
altogether a sumptuous revelation of barbaric pomp,
and would have tended even of itself to have ren-
dered remarkable to an extraordinary degree
this revival of " Hamlet," at the Lyceum under
Mr. Fechter's management. Here, however, it
should be remarked at once that the new pictorial
decorations, the scenery, the picturesque and
often gorgeous costumes, the splendid up-
holstery work, and all the rest of it—were
wholly and absolutely subordinated to the care
evidently devoted throughout to the acting by Mr.
Fechter and his company. The impersonations,
apart from the gifted actor-manager, himself, were
many of them, in a high degree worthy of admira-
tion. Miss Kate Terry's Ophelia was an exquisitely
pathetic and tender realisation of that lovely
imagining of Shaksperees. Miss Elsworthy's Queen
Gertrude, again, was, all through the play signally
meritorious. The Polonius of Mr. Brougham
lacked that unctuous senility which was noticeable
of late years in Mr. Meadows—and which in the his-
tory of the modern stage is understood to have
had its most felicitous pourtrayal years ago by that
true Shaksperian actor the late Mr. Blanchard. The
King Claudius of Mr. Emery was one of the moat
successful delineations of a stage monarch that we
have for a long while witnessed. As a piece of
serious acting it was as excellent in its way as poor
Bland's Burlesque Sovereigns used to be as speci-
mens of grotesque impersonation. Mr. Shore looked
Horatio, and that was all : while the Ghost of
Hamlet's father, as represented by Mr. Jordan, had
by far too robustuous a voice for a mere unsub
stantial apparition. As to the part, the part of parts
in the whole Tragedy, the Tragic hero among all
Tragic heroes, Hamlet the Dane, as impersonated
by Mr. Fechter—what play-goer in London
does not already know it, and know it
perfectly ? lUmlet the blonde-haired, Hamlet
in funereal black, but without a touch of the glit-
picturesque attire. Pechter's
tering bugles on his
Hamlet in a word ! That strange, new, thoroughly
unconventional Hamlet that startled the world
of London playgoers either into admiration or into
indignation, accordingly as the beholders happened
to be infatuated or not in regard to the old tradi-
tional version of the Danish Prince—in his personal
attributes, in his very dress, in his various readings,
in effect, in the whole spirit and in the whole sub-
stance of that great tragic character. At the period
of Mr. Fechter's original appearance as Hamlet at
the Princess's, we carefully analyzed the intellec-
tual peculiarities more especially noticeable in so
many of his astounding innovations. Upon the whole
our estimate then of what appeared to be its eminent
charms, even among them its pre-eminent beauties,
has now been confirmed upon the revival of the
great tragedy at the Lyceum on Saturday last, under
the distinguished Actor's own management.
Whether or not it can be traceable to the hiatus
that has occurred in the representation of Ham.
let by Mr. Fechter—by reason of the popularity
last season of " The Duke's Motto" and this
season, until now, of the kindred melodrama of
" Bel Demonio"—certain it is that, some among the
most exquisite of the new points in Mr. Fechter's
reading of Hamlet were, according to our notion,
either forgotten or strangely slurred over on Satur-
day. Where Polonius, for example, asks him, in
the first act, whether he will not come in out of the
air—his sudden exclamation, with an indescribable
pathos in the very tone of his voice, "Into my
grave ?—passed on Saturday almcst unnoticed,
almost unthought of. His innovative readings,
again, still strangely jar at times upon our long
accustomed sense of the meaning of the words of
Shakspere. As, for example, where the Ghost is re-
lating to him his being barbarously murdered in
the orohard,when Hamlet, listening, horror stricken,
to the narrative, and suddenly recognizing the
identity of the assassin through the Ghost's
generalised description of him, Mr. Pechter sighs
forth, as in an agonised sigh " 0 my prophetic
soul !" and then, interrogatively asks suddenly of
the Ghost, with a stress upon the pronoun—" My
Uncle ?" It is in the love scenes with Ophelia, how-
ever, that Mr. Fechter, to our thinking, altogether
defies competition. The exquisitely pathetic tens
derness of his acting, of his inimitable bye-play, of
the wonderful fluctuation of contending emotions
over his eminently expressive, and also eminently
handsome, face, the tearful music of his
intonations throughout those charming love
scenes with Ophelia—but especially towards
the close of that one in which he bids her again
and yet again, in an incoherent phreezy of con-
tending passions (some assumed, some real)
" Get thee to a Nunnery !"—roused the Lyceum
audience on Saturday, as the audiences at the
Princess's used to be aroused, we need not say for
how many hundred nights, to a pitch of enthusiasm
as loud and prolonged in its expression, as it was in
itself absolutely unaffected. The popular trage-
dian, it should be said, immediately on his first
appearance, was welcomed with a long-continued,
and again and yet again reiterated thunder of ap-
plause, and afterwards during the evening, was
summoned before the audience anew at the end of
every act (save one), to receive a repetition of the
same cordial acclamations. The single exception
referred to above in parenthesis being attributable
solely to the admiration which had been immediately
before then excited among the audience by the last
scene of Ophelia, in that strange eventful tragedy,
where she comes on dazed into madness by her
griefs, warbling snatches of song, and distributing
flowers among the royal bystanders--a scene in
which Miss Kate Terry made a genuine hit, win-
ning on her exit, a stoney outburst of plaudits.
At the close of ail the other acts, Mr. Ftchter had

house.

to appear anew before the footlights (and no won
der !) to receive from his audience renewed expres-
sion of their admiration. It was a greeting justly
due to him on Saturday last at once as an actor and
as a manager, as a manager of extraosdinary enter-
prise, and as an actor of very rare gifts and of
unquestionable genius.

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HER MAJESTY,

BALMORAL, May 19.

The Queen walked in the grounds in the morn-
ing, and went out in the afternoon, accompanied by
their Royal Highnesses the Princess Louise and
Princess Beatrice, and attended by Lady Churchill.

Her Royal Highness the Princess Helena, with
the Prince and Princess Leiningen, drove to the
Liun of Die.

His Royal Highness Prince Alfred was present
at the marriage of his cousin Princess Clot)lde of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha with tl,e Archduke Joseph,
which was solemnised at Coburg on the 12th inst.
His royal highness proceeded from thence on a visit
to his sister, tLe Princess Alice (Princess Louis of
Hesse DArmstadt), and goes by Carlsruhe and
Geneva to Marseilles, where he will join the Racoon
on the 22d inst.

MAY 20.

The Queen went out in the grounds in the morn-
ing, and drove in the afternoon with her 2.3yal
Highness the Princess Leiningen.

The Prince and Princess of Wales.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by
the Countess of Morton and Major Teesdale, drove
to Hampton Conrt on Saturday.
The Prince an e Princess, attended by the Countess
of Morton and Major Teesdele, went to the Italian
Opera, Covent-garden, in the evening.
The Rev. Professor Gibson had the honour of
explaining to his Royal Highness the Prince of
Wales the details of the illuminated address pre-
sented to their royal highnesses, on their marriage,
by the Presbyterians of Ireland.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, with the
Countess of Morton and Major Teesdale in waitia:g,
attended Divine service at the Chapel Royal, St.
James's, yesterday morning.
The communion service was read by the Rev. the
Subdean, the Rev. S. V. Povah, and the Rev. Thos.
lieleaore. The Rev, the Subdean preached the
sermon from Psalm ix., v. 10.

Anthem, "I was in the spirit," Blow; sung by
Messrs. R. Barnby, Benson, Bradbury, and Whit€-

Mr. Cooper presided at the organ.

The following were present during the service =—
His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, the
Archbishop of York, the Archbishop of Armagh,
the Bishop of St. David's, the Duke of St. Albans,
Earl St. Germans, Marquis of Bath, Viscount Syd-
ney, Lord Vivian, Lord Hardinge, and Lieutenant-
Colonel the Hon. Sir Charles Phipps.