MACREADY played Hamlet on Monday. It is the finest performance
of the part left to the stage, and the best of his personations of the characters of SIIAKSPEARE. It has the frankness, the gentleness, the refinement, the sensitive melancholy of Hamlet's nature : the one defect is that common to most modern stage versions,—it is too sombre, wanting those touches of sarcastic levity—the flickering lights in the picture of moody sadness—that show the reaction of the elastic spirit of youth, weighed down by sorrow and pain of mind, and by an over contemplative disposition which wastes its energies in speculative reflection. The jocular and familiar tone of the dialogue evidently in- dicates a playful and almost wild gayety. MACREADY'S Handel is equally free from the stilted assumption of artificial dignity, and the display of power and physical dexterity ; into one of which two ex- tremes stage Hamlets commonly run.
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