THE COURIER.
i
1
Once, a great many centuries ago
here was a camp In the wear)' wilder
ness of Slnal, the camp of a people who
were Journeying from a bad country of
plagues and flesh pots and taskmasters,
of dark religions and horrible rites and
grim barbarism. Journeying to an undis
covered country, they hoped a better
one. In the midst of the camp was a
tabernacle. Without that tabernacle
was the court of the people, where the
multitude came and went, and babbled
and worshipped; tradesmen, bondmen,
lepers, things unclean. Within was a
court where only the priests came,
where the Levltes performed their holy
offices. And within that there was still
another chamber, where only the high
priest might enter, who carried God's
fire In his censer. And as It was then, so
it Is now. There is another people
Journeying by slow stages Into some
thing better, something dim and unde
fined, lying off yonder beyond the peaks
of Slnal. And with us we carry all
that has been most worthy In our race,
the memory and work of the great, our
tabernacle, and the rest we leave to
perish by the wayside, and the sands
blow over them and they are forgotten.
And we have our Holy Thing, which no
man may profane without swift ven
geance from our hands or from heaven's.
And this holy ground of ours In Elsl
nore. Our civilization Is not a thought
ful or a scholarly one, but In its own
rough way it is loyal to Hamlet. That
play and the Magna Charter are the
two most worthy things that the Anglo
Saxon people has done from Its begin
ning. Other nations have written
great tragedies, tragedies of man's
heart and of his passions, but we
alone have this tragedy of the soul, and
of man's divinity. For Hamlet Is not a
play of love or action or Impulse, but
of thought, and of those deep and secret
motives which deal with the soul alone,
which fix the relations between It and
the man himself, which decree Its doom,
which "summons It to heaven or to hell."
When a young player appears In
Hamlet, he Is our natural enemy. We
regard him as a thief and a robber un
til he has proved that he is mightier
than we. It is not for us to prove that
he cannot play Hamlet, but for him to
prove that he can. Just how far Mr.
Walker Whiteside proves this It would
be Impossible to say after hearing him
only once. But of so earnest, poetic and
noble a work as he presented Wednes
day evening. I can find little harsh to
say. I have not seen all the Hamlets of
history as Mr. Whiteside's New York
critics seem to have done. Probably
Mr. Whiteside knows a great deal more
about Hamlet than I, that is his busi
ness. I can only Judge him by what he
makes me fell and know about it, for
that also Is his business. To me Mr.
Whiteside's Hamlet is original and all
his own, not because It Is unlike Booth's
or Keane's or Irvlng's whom I never
saw. but because If one scene of it Is
stolen. It is all stolen, every look, every
gesture, every breath he draws in It.
It Is the work of one man; It Is the suf
fering of one man.
Several people asked me Wednesday
evening if.I ftld not think that there was
a gloomy Jaoaetony about this partlcu
,lar Hajn There certainly was, but I
think that gloom is necessary to Mr.
- Whiteside's conception of the part, and
that If he varied it he would be false
to the best artistic instincts within him.
To me, personally. It is the only true
way of playing Hamlet. I cannot see
In Hamlet the sportive wit that Mr.
Lowell saw. There is wit, certainly, but
it Is more gloomy than the spoken path
os; It Is the terrible ghastly sort of wit
that masks suffering. It Is a gloomy
play. In most plays the Inciting cir
cumstances of the tragedy occur after
the play opens, but Hamlet's father was
dead and his mother false to his mem
ory before the play begins. As in Mac
beth, the clouds of the' tempest are al
ready lowering when the curtain rises.
From that oath in the glimmering dawn
upon the bleak turrets of Elslnore, his
own dark fate is upon him. It follows
him like the ghost, completely sur
rounds htm, and locks down upon him,
the Wagnerian operas. Like the curse
of the Nlbelung ring in fine schol
arly quality that is difficult to de
fine. He emphasises the shrinking, al
most feminine delicacy of the Prince,
which a more robust actor misses alto
gether. There are moments when his
reading Is not convincing, Is mechanic
al and almost weak, like his reading of
"The time is out of Joint, O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set It right."
which was light and melodramatic I
think he will make that line deeper
and more prophetic In time. For In that
moment, looking Into the reddening
east, Hamlet saw his destiny unrolled
before htm, laid bare by the retreating
clouds of night; he saw his sacrifice,
that he was to be the Instrument of fate,
that he was to suffer for wrongs not of
his doing, live for ends not his own,
carry upon his shoulders the sins of a
whole court. In that moment of ele
mental spiritual conflict he saw that his
own life and his own love were not for
him, saw them go out forever, as the
curtains of the tempest shut out a
star. After that, no more of the fair
Ophelia. For him that was Indeed a
momentous dawn.
Mr. Whiteside's Hamlet may be weak,
but he is noble. When he died Horatio
did not say, "Good night, sweet Prince,"
but we, who watched, said it for him.
As a play, it seems impertinent to write
of Hamlet, after all that has been writ
ten and said and sung of It before. But
as long as every spring the primroses
blossom In the fields of Avon, and ev
ery summer the wild thyme blows
about Anne Hathaway's cottage, we
may all of us turn to that sacred and
greatest name of our race and do It
reverence. To reverence Is the priv
ilege of the small, as well as of
the great. We may turn In awe and
wonder to that greatest drama, that
polar star In the glittering fir
mament of art, whereby all men
gauge their work, and by whose
magnitude we measure all the
distances of heaven. And It shines not
only for that astronomer whose busi
ness Is with the planets and worlds,
but for the herdsman, that he may
drive his flock aright through the night,
and for the fisherman to steer by on the
lonely deep. It is ours, as Christ Is
ours. I never see it but there comes
back to me that overpowering sense of
Its gigantic moral and artistic scope.
Take that one scene in which mad
Ophelia metes out to Laertes and the
king and queen their destiny In flow
ers, where else is there anything so
delicate? And then that complete im
molument of Hamlet's personal life and
passion to the great demands of his
soul, of ethical Justice, that great strug
gel with the Titanic powers of fate.
Beside that all the finished dramas of
the French seems the hollow work of
clever pigmies. It took the Saxon
mind to recognize soul needs like that.
The French write cleverer "plays, the
Italians more Impassioned ones, but all
that is greatest and highest in Anglo
Saxon character is there, in Elslnore.
It Is the same power, the same over
soul that bullded the Gothic cathedrals.
Someway the artists of the north seem
to get so much nearer God. They are
not craftsmen, they have no law but in
spiration, they are priests In verse and
prophets In stone.
And yet they say that Hamlet Is a
study In failure. Well, it was failure
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JiSLS
TELEPHONES
that was greater than success. Whoso
loseth his life shall find it. So did
Giordano Bruno fall when he was
burned In Italy, so did Huss fail when
he was burned In Switzerland, so did
Christ fall when he was crucified In
Judea. Their kingdoms were not ot
this world, their lives did not save this
world, but their memories have. They
gave the world the Ideals, by which we
live, for which we die. For sometimes
even In this world where "good is oft
interred with our bones," the greatness
of a man's soul may outline the weak
ness of his arm. After all good Is good,
eternal, triumphant over weakness, de
feat, failure. The "unlit lamp and the
ungirt loin" is not the end. "Other
heights In other lives. God willing."
Go to Woempner's for drugs, 139 S. 10
Miss Ferguson's dancing classes at the
Lansing ball. Classes both afternoon
and evening. The Lansing hall for rent
for parties. Residence 1610 G street.
Woempner for paints and oils, 139 S.10
PROE
gmtinued
-
1019 () gt :
125 10 H8 SO., 8TH, STREET
McINTOSH
should be your
PRINTER
AMERICAN EXCHANGE MATIOMAI BANK
LINCOLN, NEB.
I.M.RAYMOND,
President.
S. H. BUBNHAM.
Cashier.
A. J. SAWYER
Vice President.
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Assistant Cashier.
CAPITAL, $250,000
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Directors I. M.Raymond, S. H. Bnrnbam,
C. O. Dawes. A. J. Sawyer, Lewis Gregory,
N. NSnell,G. M. LamberUon. D. G. Wi
MR.OIH
Instructor
i n voice
culture or
SINGING
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100IIS 9 A. I. TO 2:30 P I. AID BY
APPOINTMENT
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