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BOOTH AND SALVINI IN HAMLET.

Another great assemblage greeted Edwin Booth and Tommaso Salvini last night at the Academy of Music. Booth appeared as Hamlet; Salvini as the Ghost; Barton Hill as the King; Mrs. Bowers as the Queen; Miss Marie Wainwright as Ophelia; the younger Salvini as Laertes, and Mr. Couldock as Polonius. As the Ghost appears in only two vocal scenes, and as Signor Salvini is the only gentleman who spoke a foreign language, the representation was, substantially, the whole English manifesto of the tragedy - Salvini's performance of the Ghost being the exceptional feature and the chief novelty of the night.

In every work that Salvini has presented certain fine gifts of his nature and noble elements of his acting have invariably been manifest. His stateliness of presence, his ample, melodious, resonant voice, his uncommon capacity of diversified facial expression, his abundant physical power, his consistent preservation of a just correspondence between motive and action, and his profuse mimetic skill, which has become to him a second nature, are always obvious, whatever may be the personality that he has undertaken to interpret. No actor, surely, can ever have used pantomime more eloquently than Salvini uses it. Who that has seen it will forget Conrade's narrative of the homicide, the prison life, of the escape, in "Morte Civile"? Or Othello's delivery of his defensive speech before the Venetian Senate? It pleases Salvini sometimes to use his great talent for pantomime in the wrong place - as, for example, when uttering Othello's farewell, a speech which is never so fine and touching as when it is spoken with no gesticulation or embellishment whatever. But he is supreme and superb in the employment of this expedient at moments when it is essential. As the Ghost, in "Hamlet," he could not and did not use it, but relied exclusively on a sombre, unearthly aspect and the scope and depth and variety of his phenomenal voice. The impersonation was pervaded with a noble dignity and grand solemnity. It is not too much to say that in this performance of the Ghost Signor Salvini gave a deeper and clearer impression of his intellectual grasp of this subject of "Hamlet" than he has before given by his performance of Hamlet himself. His elocution in the Ghost's narrative was beautifully shaded and his introduction of the tender impulse of human feeling when speaking the adieu to Hamlet had a most touching effect.

As to the permanent value of Signor Salvini's performances - judged by what they contain, viewed as ideals, and considered with reference to their meaning for others than the actor himself - a thoughtful judgment cannot invariably speak with enthusiatm. The spirit that shines through some of his recent performances is not the exalted, romantic, refined spirit of poetic youth. Yet his acting continues to reveal a human creature whose endowments are extraordinary and whose character is such as must arouse and stimulate a lively analytic interest. Mankind, always attracted by the study of human nature, turns spontaneously toward any and every specimen of that nature which stands apart from mediocrity and therein promises some kind of a solution of the everlasting mystery in which the human race abides. Such a personality must always be significant, and such an actor as Salvini, who sometimes startles and usually interests, must always have students and admirers. He stands now on the summit of a great fame, which nothing hereafter will essentially modify.

Edwin Booth as Hamlet is already one of the traditions of the American stage. In this journal it has been discussed from year to year with a degree of minuteness which, to some readers, may have seemed wearisome iteration. But the public requires to be reminded, now and then, of the excellence which is close at hand, and on such an occasion as this, it is inevitable that at least a passing intimation should be given of the grounds which justify acceptance of Edwin Booth's Hamlet as the best upon the modern stage. It is the best because it is the truest. Mr. Booth does does not go back of Shakespeare to reproduce the hero of an ancient chronicle; does not labor to depoetize an ethereal poetic creation and degrade it to the level of everyday life. Hamlet, as Byron truly said, "is not nature." He is an ideal man. His mental and spiritual condition is the result of a mysterious and perhaps impossible experience. He has seen and talked with a spirit from another world. His temperament, likewise, is exceptional. He is inexpressibly gentle. He has lived through a noble and manly youth. He has honored father and mother, with that beautiful filial affection which is rooted in the soul and which shows the angel in the man. His "noble and most sovereign reason" has been shaken by a terrible affliction and a supernatural shock, leaving him dazed upon the confines of insanity. That is the Hamlet embodied by Edwin Booth, and it is chiefly admirable because it is Shakespeare's creation. Looking upon this Hamlet the spectator beholds a princely gentleman, whose nervous organization, strung to the highest pitch, is tremulous to every breath of feeling and of circumstance; whose sad-eyed wisdom sees the futility of all things upon this earth; whose mind, oppressed by all-sufficient motive and necessity for action, yet saturated with the sense of human nothingness, is "perplexed in the extreme"; and whose soul, carrying mortal life as the weariest of burdens, gropes darkly toward immortality. A beautiful spiit animates and dignifies the whole representation - a spirit which blends the deepest feeling, the liveliest imagination, a lofty magnanimity, and the most sweet and gentle refinement, weaving them together with imperceptible art and throwing over them all a mysterious halo of romance and pathos. The statuesque beauty and intellectual concentration of the performance, the grace of gesture with which it is embellished, and the noble, fluent and diversified elocution with which it is delivered, were found last night to have lost none of their victorious charm. As long as Edwin Booth's Hamlet remains upon the stage the public will enjoy a dramatic representation in which the laws of poetical tragedy are respected and the feeling of poetry is realized and conveyed. The welcome accorded to Mr. Booth upon his first entrance last night was that of long continued, emphatic and significant applause. It was obvious that the public intended by a somewhat marked and unusual demonstration to express its disapproval of the unjust and ungenerous aspersions which have been cast upon Mr. Booth in some quarters within the last two days. Such a manifestation of popular feeling is entirely creditable to the city in which Edwin Booth has had a long, honorable and, indeed, illustrious career. It was remarked, however, by Falstaff that honor is something which detraction will not suffer. Some people are never so happy as when they think they have found a flaw in a noble character and a perfect reputation. "Folly loves the martyrdom of fame."

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