we trust that Mr. Shakespeare will consider
it worth while to effect this slight alteration.
He would thus obtain space for exhibiting
his hero from an interesting point of view
which he has in the most unaccountable
manner wholly overlooked.

His Hamlet is a German student. When
the play opens he had come home for the long
vacation from the University of Wittenberg,
and is on the point of returning thither, but
the king, having observed in the somewhat
affected language which our poet usually
adopts when he is not vulgar, that
For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire,
he stays in Denmark, and we lose the fine,
aesthetical development which, by a shifting
of the action between Wittenberg and
Elsinore, would bring us into contact with
the German Universities of the year 500 A.D.
It is that year which we find, from internal
evidence, is the period illustrated.

We have taken some exception against
Mr. Shakespeare's diction, and it is a point
to which we must direct his close attention.
He is a writer, who, if not as a dramatist, yet
in some other walk of art, may hope to
achieve something, for he is not destitute of
imagination; but we predict for him certain
failure if his language be not better chosen
than we find it in the tragedy of Hamlet.
There remains much to be learnt by an
author in whose play a king, having buried a
slain courtier in haste, and reflecting that he
had been unwise in not having given him
distinguished public obsequies, expresses this
reflection in such words as these solemnly
uttered:—
We have done but greenly,
In hugger-mugger to inter him.
But it is now just that these friendly strictures
should be balanced by some passages in
which the poet shall commend himself to the
attention of our readers. This, except two
words which we italicise as illustrating that
defect in Mr. Shakespeare's style, is extremely
fine. Hamlet is speaking:
Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
Importing Denmark's health, and England's too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,—
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,—
No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck, off.
Hor. Is't possible?

This, too—though somewhat obscure, and
injured in effect by the accustomed fault of
diction—is a noble thought:—
A dull and muddy-pated rascal, peak,
Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life,
A damn'd defeat was made.

We lay this work down—immature as it
is—not without expression of the pleasure we
have had in its perusal. If we have appeared
to dwell upon its faults, we have done so
because we believe Mr. Shakespeare competent
to understand them, and still, with a
promising career before him, young enough
to succeed in their correction. The tragedy
is one that will repay perusal.

The next paper is taken up, and the great
Swan of Avon finds himself afloat upon a
very sunny stream.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. A Tragedy.
By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Heart, Soul,
and Co.

The public will feel under obligation to
the Messrs. Heart and Soul for the liberal
form in which they have presented this delightful
work. Hamlet is one of the most
elegant and charming dramas published of
late years, and establishes at once the credit
of its young author. The plot is simply told.
Claudius, King of Denmark, wears the crown
of a brother whom he has poisoned, and has
married also his brother's wife within a
month or two of the murder. Hamlet, Prince
of Denmark—son of the poisoned king,
returned from the excellent school at
which he had been placed by a wise father,
at Wittenberg, to follow that beloved parent
to the grave—is scandalised at his mother's
promptly succeeding marriage with his uncle,
and his dissatisfaction is heightened by a
communication made to him by his father's
ghost—strikingly depicted, and always vanishing
at cock-crow—who informs him of the
crime by which his dissolution was effected.
Unaccustomed to spirits, Hamlet becomes
light-headed, and is still further troubled by
the refusal of Ophelia—whose character is
nobly painted—to see him again; her father
Polonius—an able sketch—as well as her
brother Laertes—a beautiful depiction—
having told her that attentions from a young
prince could only be improper. In this state
of affairs, Prince Hamlet, who leads his friend
Horatio—a noble development—to believe
that he is assuming the cloak of madness for
a purpose, walks about the palace, talking in
a most interesting and amusing way, and
thus furnishing that comic element which is
so essential to the popularity of a great and
imposing play. Nothing will please Hamlet,
but that he must have a play acted in the
palace, representing before the eyes of Claudius
and his mother—a forcible delineation
(under the guise of an ingenious fable actually
at the time in print, and relating to quite
other persons) of the harm they have done to
his dead father and his memory. Much
agitation is the result, and in a magnificent
scene Hamlet afterwards scolds his mother
in her bedroom, and kills the father of his
Ophelia, whom he mistakes for a rat.
Ophelia goes mad upon this, and Hamlet is
despatched in a ship to England, given in
charge to two young men, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern—whose characters are