bring in my lord." And I should like to know
if you think Osric worthy of an immortal bard!
"Your lordship is right welcome back to
Denmark," he says. "I thank your lordship, 'tis
very hot;" " it is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed;"
"I commend my duty to your lordship."
My opinion is that Osric is a muff. I'd
rather play a policeman in a pantomime, and be
bonneted. You say I am picking out one or
two of the worst parts. Am I? What about
Voltimand, Cornelius, Francisco, Fortinbras,
Bernardo, Marcellus, the priest, and the
captain? Why, there are eleven characters in this
one play that are as bad as they can be. Not
one of them ever gets a hand or a laugh. No
dramatic author of the present day would dare
to write such bad parts. Why, the very supers
would strike at them, let alone general utility.
Take any play you like; one is as bad as
another. The Merchant of Venice? What do
you think are the feelings of an actor who has
to buy a pair of new silk tights to play Salanio,
or Salarino? They're both swells, and must
wear silk tights; but they haven't a good line
between them. A pretty thing, too, to have to
dress yourself up for the Prince of Arragon, and
find your own tights, hat, shoes, and jewellery.
Once, when I was Prince of Morocco,
I didn't have a dinner for a week, having
been obliged to spend all my salary on the get
up. Shakespeare, as an actor himself, ought to
have known better than write such parts. Let
me see what are the other characters in the
play: Salerio, Leonardo, Balthazar, Stephano,
and the Duke. I have played every one of
them, and never could make anything of them
— never knew anybody that could. Macbeth
better? Not a bit of it. Worse. What do
you say to Lennox, Rosse, Menteth, Angus,
Cathness, Fleance, Siward, old and young, the
Doctor, the bleeding officer, the porter, the old
man? Why, it swarms with bad parts. Othello
is not so bad; but yet you can't say there's
much to be made of the Duke of Venice and
Ludovico.

There's only one merit in Shakespeare's
dukes, and that is, that they generally sit at a
table and don't show their legs. You may wear
your street trousers; only you must be careful
to keep the tablecloth before you when you get
up, so as not to show them. Take King John.
I've played the King of France, but I must say
a more ungrateful part I never dressed for; and
a king too! Cardinal Pandulph is not worth
a—; well, if you object to the word, I'll say
straw, which is weak, and doesn't half express
my feelings. I repeat, the Cardinal is not worth
—allow me to say, a malediction, even when
doubled with the Citizen of Angiers, who has to
stand on a box with a tin pot on his head on the
top of a pasteboard battlement, at the risk of his
neck. I once went on for Cardinal Pandulph
in a red frock and sugar-loaf hat, which is the
correct thing, and somebody called out " Mother
Shipton, by Jove!" and when I popped my head
over the battlements afterwards as the Citizen,
the boys in the gallery shallooed me. It is no
joke, I can tell you, to be a cardinal one minute
and a citizen on the top of a wall the next.
And that is a pretty speech to put into a fellow's
mouth, when he's balancing himself on an egg-box,
with a weak board in the centre, and hanging
on like grim death to a pasteboard wall that
wobbles about and threatens to come down with
you every minute. It's a long speech, and it's
a difficult speech, and very pleasant to deliver
when King John is standing below swearing at
you like a trooper because you don't give it
right. Who could give it right? Just try
this: "If not complete, O, say he is not she;
and she again wants nothing to name want, if
want it be not, that she is not he; he is the
half part of a blessed man, left to be finished by
such a she, and she a fair divided excellence,
whose fulness of perfection lies in him." You
don't recollect that passage? No, I should
think not; who does? Nobody. If it wasn't
Shakespeare you would say it was bosh. And just
imagine the citizen sliding down a ladder to
doff the tin pot and don the Mother Shipton
hat to be ready for the next scene, where he
walks in to " hail the anointed deputies of
heaven," and demand why they spurn Mother
Church and defy the Pope. It's not " once a
priest, always a priest," when you play Pandulph,
I can tell you. It's first one thing and then
another, and when you are the Cardinal and
when the Citizen, you don't always know for
certain. As You Like It? No, I don't like it.
Why, there are more bad parts in that play
than I have fingers to count them on, including
thumbs: Frederick, Amiens, Le Beau, Orlando,
Dennis, Adam, Mar-text, Corin, Sylvius,
Jaques. You call Jaques a good part, do you?
Why, he has only to come in at the end, and
say, " Let me have audience for a word or two;
I am the second son of old Sir Rowland;" and
then tell a long story about a boy and an old
man, which nobody listens to. For my part, I
always skip it, and when I have said that I am
the second son of old Sir Rowland, finish up at
once with, " This, to be true, I do engage my
life." You don't recollect that in Jaques's part.
I do; and I don't remember much else. Do I
mean the melancholy Jaques? I do mean the
melancholy Jaques; he's melancholy enough, in
all conscience. "All the world's a stage, and
all the men and women merely players?"
There's nothing of the kind in the part; I've
played it often, and I ought to know. You
mean that other Jaques. Oh, well; I have
never played that, and if it ain't better than
Jaques de Bois I don't want to. I tell you, you
can't name a single one of Shakespeare's plays
that ain't full of the very worst parts that ever
were offered to an actor. And the worst of it
is, that if you threaten to throw them up, you
are told that you mustn't; for it's Shakespeare.
And you are expected to take as much pains
with them as if they were the finest things that
ever were written.

It's pains thrown away; that's what I contend.
Did you ever hear an audience applaud
Cardinal Pandulph, or the First Citizen? Did