Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

162
unusual mincing manner" combined with "the most • clicate of
affected voices". Punch thought his tone too colloquial -
"more friendly than formidable" -
in fact, quite a Ghost to whom you would offer
a pair of clippers, and then ask him to chr.t
cosily and tell you all about it, over a pipe
and a glass of very hot grog, before a cheerful
fire.
Yardley*s burlesque, Very Little Hamlet, had the Ghost sit darn
and riiat amiably, but recent productions by Dr Jonathan Miller
have shown that the Ghost's citting down and ^dressing Hamlet
?0
with some intimacy can be more unnerving than amusing .
Barrett fell to the ground at the Ghoct'e suggestion
that Gertrude had been won to Claudius* "shameful lust" (45-6),
and The Daily Nowo thought this the first stage in Hamlet's
pi
mentcl decline ~. The reviewer, aligning himself with "the
later school of German critics", took Hamlet to b© a sensitive
and intelligent young man whose indecision was a aign of
immaturity. His affections lying predominantly v.ith his father,
he had turned now to his mother, "only to find her the ifc
of the uncle he detested, and finally to learn th© awful story
of her cin and shame". The next blow would be his discovery
that Opheli was an instrument of Claudius. This extreme
reaction to the intimation of Gertrude's fclrity was a rjign
that a certain intemperance of disposition was turning to
hysteria. Hamlet's a; iifl had bcon on his cworo when he vov;cd
to sweep to his revenge (31) - like noct of hie predecessors
he took the line "0 "Jo.-rible! 0 horrible] Jot-t horriblej" (00).
His soliloquy after the Ghost's e. it ("0 all you host of
heaven...") was spoken in "an hysterical noniicr" (Jlao Tines).
According to the prompt-copy his behaviour v.uth Horatio and
[larceilUB continued this hyctcria: after "There's ne'er a
villain dwelling in nil Lcnnrrk" he paused, looked at the two
men, and chancing his tone from the "earnest purpose" of the
first phrase, adc'ed "But he's an arrant lor-ve". C'liis was
regarded by The Tincc, as the first ; i,:\n of Hamlet's antic
disposition. The innacrjioned acting of Barrett in thic scene,
serving to cr.trblish a frenzied dic^ist underlying tiic chp.rrcter's
acsun-'tion of nadness, v;ao unfortunately ov r-emphasisor
by itc; contract with t'cic blandness of C^u fore! . c Horatio. '&*.