Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-06-15

mentally, and in order to do little de-
tective work he permits people to
think so.
His father finally returns in the form
of ghost and describes the whole thing
to Hamlet. Last evening the Ghost was
played by an unknown party who has
formerly played the Croak of Concealed
Frog in "Fanchon the Cricket" He has
also played the Croak in Uncle Toms
Cabin" He claims also to have PLAYED
He'll in the "Damnation of Faust"
he is not good actor, being alto
gether too restless for a ghost. In a
ghost the chief charms are, if you please,
cheerfulness and repose. Moreover, the
Ghost last evening was noticed by those
who had good seats-in front of mem
bers of the presto wet its finger and
pinch flea that had concealed itself be-
meath the royal armor during the most
tragic portion of the play.
And now, briefly, let Us speak of the
play. Passing over the fact that Shake
speare cannot act little ait, and that
all his methods are pecCIiaAy the prop
erty Of a former decade, also that his
business is decade, let us treat of the
play with which this sometime poacher
and sometime playwright has come TO
town.
Not only is Hamlet" abnormally fatal,
being nothing but funeral procession
and lunatic asylum on high lonesome,
but it is a secret stab at religion. We
need not go far back in the career of this
rural playwright to discover the cause
Of this attack upon all that is good.
Shakespeare, it seems, several years ago,
at Avon, owing to his somewhat tardy
nuptuals and general shiftlessness, was
blackballed by the Young Peoples Soci-
ETY. for Christian Endeavor, and ever
since that time he has sought in every
way to get even. He now goes out of his
way to say to the priest in the fifth act:
tell thee, churlish priest,
a ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou hest bowling.
This shows the littleness of the Smart
Alick of Avon who has come to town
to elevate the metropolitan stage
And now rtgsrding the fatal nature of
Hamlet" From the time the curtain
goes up on the first act until it de-
scends on the last one there is moth
ing but death and lunacy. We came
home last night wondering why some
enterp1sing man did not go to Denmark
and open an asylum with an embalm-
ing works connected with it. While
the rghttUl king is sleeping off the eff
fects of dinner and reception given to
Major Pond and Henry NJ Stanley on
the previous evening, his wife, who has
been looking over the royal bedstead
with small can of corrosive sublimate,
suddenly decides to fill the old mans
ear with what she has left, and in less
than a week the throne has been pro-
bated.
And so it goes. Death reigns every
where after that. Each act closes with
enough carnage TO tickle the palate of
Front de Beuf or to gorge the appetite
Of Herod the Great. In fact Shake
speare may be termed the Jack the
Ripper of the English stage. Hamlet
sticks his sword into the currant bushes
and kills Polonius Cordelia gets 10
thinking too hard on The Higher Edu-
cation and goes crazy. after which she
jumps off the dock. Finally the fifth,
or Philip Armour abattoir act, closes the
play with four dead people OF the stage
and one hundred and fifty deadheads in
the audience.
Shakespeare ought TO dramatize the
deluge, or the plague, or Clusters last
charge, or Greenwood cemetery. Ham
let" does not give him scope enough. An
old lady who sat in the stall forward of
our own last evening wondered why
Shakespeare did not marry Hamlet and
Ophelia, and put them in charge of a
large and thrifty asylum, instead of kill
ing them of. We could not tell her.
No one could tell her.
Hamlet" IN short, is morbid and i'm
possible. Denmark was chosen as the
scene because no one knows anything of
Denmark, and an unprincipled drama
list feels free 70 toy with the truth in his
treatment and his motif We predict
that Hamlet" viii finish out the week
with a papered house and biting frost
The play will never again be heard of
II is ephemeral, ribald, coarse, morbid,
sacrilegious, untruthful, devoid of local
gags, and does not in any way appeal to
the better element of this place.
If Hamlet could jump into the tank
and rescue Ophelia, and then sing
popular song while she was putting on
some dry clothes, she getting back in