“Not at all,” said the Great Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine forehead. “Not at all. I do better in both of them. My genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time.”
“Ah,” we said, as a light broke in upon us, “then that, we presume, is the reason why you are about to appear in Shakespeare?”
The Great Actor frowned.
“I would rather put it,” he said, “that Shakespeare is about to appear in me.”
“Of course, of course,” we murmured, ashamed of our own stupidity.
“I appear,” went on the Great Actor, “in Hamlet. I expect to present, I may say, an entirely new Hamlet.”
“A new Hamlet!” we exclaimed, fascinated. “A new Hamlet! Is such a thing possible?”
“Entirely,” said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine head forward again. “I have devoted years of study to the part. The whole conception of the part of Hamlet has been wrong.”
We sat stunned.
“All actors hitherto,” continued the Great Actor, “or rather, I should say, all so-called
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