The daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1848-1851, 1849-02-21
structures on III ami
NrMRER IL.

rive publish the following with great pleasure t IS with
the sketch which appeared Friday last extracted from
forthcoming work. the compiler of which Mr. John Gals
ford of the American Theatre. Though bold assump
ton the of to attempt serious under
taking Shakespeare yet we believe, from
personal knowledge of his abilities and experience, that he
fully equal the task which, when completed will afford
great deal of instruction blended with amusement.1
| HIS age, etc.-Much argument has been carried
on by his various commentators, with regard to the
| precise age and appearance of Shakspeare's Ham
let. His first soliloquy commences
| 20, that this too, too solid flesh acould melt.'
ANY assertion of mine to prove that this actually
referred to his personal appearance, may be con-
srued into attempt cast ridicue upon charac-
| ter which has always been treated with a degree
| of solemn gravity. But whether this make the
unskiful laugh or the judicious grieve care not
punchy may appear, here assert that the royal
Dane must certainly have alluded to his own super
fluffy of meat when he commenced this speech;
for proof quote Shakespeare himself; in the fifth
act, his Queen mother asserts
| He s fat, and seant Of BREATH"
| Let those who like, rdicule the idea, but take my
word for it that Hamlet was man whose personal
| appearance would have found favor for him in the
eyes of Julius Caesar; but still this will hardly
justify sage struck aspirants in giving him the
rotundity of Faslaf.
OF his age, the only authority we have, and there
is no reason set it aside, is the evidence of the
grave-digger-
FL h as ns III s sf d
L was that very day that young Hamlet was born
Here skull hath lain the earth three and
This same skull SIR wa. yoricks skull the Kings
To which Hamlet answers, by way Of confederation,
4
| - He hath borne on his back Thousand times "
| From these extracts we have right to infer that
| Hamlet at the time specified, in the fifth act,
exactly thirty years old in another place prove,
upon conjecture, that the space of time involved in
the operation of the tragedy does not occupy more
| than six months
Exceptions to this line of argument have been
| made by various commentators, the most virulent
! of whom is one Blackstone who in a note appended
| to the fifth act writes most malciously:
"By this scene it appears that Hamlet was then
| thirty years old, and knew Yorrck well, who had
been dead t,Denty -too years. And yet in the begin
ming of the play he is spoken OF as Uery young
man one that designed TO go back to school,. e.
| to Wittenberg. The poet in the fifth act forgot
what he wrote in the first
Much as dislike arguments of any kind, more
particularly with such grave character as dead
commentator, cannot resist this opportunity of
stating that the late Mr. Blackstone wrote about
! matters he did not understand-facts that he had
not taken the trouble to ascertain the truth fall
sity of before he made assertions regarding them
even in his superficial anatomy of the fifth act he
either wrote whilst under the influence of glass
too much, or without the aid of his customary
spectacles, for the text tpentytree years as
the time that Yorrick's skull had been interred-he
must have been a royal joker indeed We're he able
to exist for three hundred and sixtyve consecutive
days in the atmosphere of coffin. With regard to
the first act have searched the text most narrowly,
and cannot discover single line which will justify
the assertion that Hamlet was very young man;
the lines:
In going back to school in Wiuenberg
is most retrograde to our DESIRE"
argue nothing in favor of, and very much against,
the assertion of Blackstone; inasmuch as Ham
let must have been, in the opinion of Kin g Clau-
dius, much too old to require further tutorage
whilst his language towards his maternal parent,
almost invariably addressing her as 60 Madam"
instead of the more endearing title of Mother,
coupled with her behavior towards him
Let not thy mother lose her prayers; Hamlet,
pray thee stay with us"-
Certainly the language of parent who had lost all
control save entreaty,) justify in presuming that
Hamlet's age about that set down by the vet
eran deliver who, if he had passed his time in over
hauling the soil of California, would have amassed
dust enough to pay off the national debt of Great
Britain.
HIS Chqracter.-Hamlet the Dane, viewed in
an impartial light, was not at all an extraordi-
nary character, nasmuch there are men in ex-
stence, and many of them too, of precisely the
same temperament-men who, placed in the same
situation, would have acted precisely as he did !;
therefore Hamlet is no fancy tch of Shakspeares
prolific brain, but true portraiture of actual and
natural existence.
1t was natural that young man, in the vigor of
e should be stung to the quick, and feel unhappy,
at the sighted memory of his father that he should
be Disguised and wish to absent himself from the
Court of Denmark when he saw with what unbe-
coming haste his mother changed her weeds for
wedding garments. His answer to his mother
Il shall in all my best obey you, madam
was quite natural, and how naturally he speaks in
the almost Immediately following soliloquy-in
that and in the soioquy-
To be or not to be-
1t Is easy to discover that this man, tired out by his
mserles, contempiates putting period to his own
existence and is only deferred from suicide by the
naturally uncertain idea he has of futuritv. 1t will |
be observed that he only gives utterance to these
ideas when quite alone and uninterrupted in his
grief How many men there are at present in ex-
stence who, if they chose reveal their thoughts
would admit that nothing but the dread of unknown
consequences, and an uncertainty of fuurity, pre-
vented them from violently finishing that life which
misfortune or misconduct had rendered miserable :
When we have shnffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause there's the respect
That makes calamity of SO long life
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time
The oppress9rs wrong, the proud mans contumeiy,
The pangs of despised love the laws delay
The insolence Of Office and the spurns
That patlent merit Of the unworthy takes
When he himself might his quietus make
With bare bodkn /"
Ophelia describes Hamlet as
The courtier's, soldiers, scholars eye tongue sword
The expectancy ard rose of the fair state
Ihe g ass OF fashion and the mould of form,