JOHN BULL. "I'VE INVESTED A MINT OF MONEY IN OTHER LANDS, IT'S TIME I PUT
SOMETHING INTO MY OWN."]
* * * * *
REVIVALS AND REVISIONS.
"IT" (as Mr. GOSSE says at the beginning of his fascinating monograph on
SWINBURNE, a work which we understand has just been crowned by the Band of
Hope) it is now beyond doubt that Mr. H.B. IRVING'S drastic way with
_Hamlet_ is to have a far-reaching effect on all revivals. New authors can
be acted more or less as they write, or as they happen to be stronger or
weaker than their "producers"; but to be revived is henceforward to be
revised, and fairly stringently too.
Mr. IRVING has made a clearance of certain parts of _Hamlet_ which
interfere with the movement of its story. Actuated by old-fashioned motives
and writing for a public that was not yet wholly lacking in discrimination,
SHAKSPEARE did his best to make _Hamlet_ a poetical as well as a dramatic
tragedy. With this end in view he accumulated the mass of rhetoric with
which we are now so familiar. It as been Mr. IRVING's task to prune this
well-meant but somewhat excessive verbiage so that the real dramatic stuff
can at last "get over.
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