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This, it will be observed, is Shakespeare, though not in the order we know it. Liberties have been taken, but what actors have not taken them? The point to be noticed is that the plot serves India admirably. Look at the Queen importunately attributing her husband's death to a serpent's bite. It is thoroughly Bengali. Official returns of to-day attribute an enormous proportion of deaths among natives to snake-bite; individuals say that the variety of snake is a human one. Anyhow, the pit understands. Jahangir is, of course, Hamlet. In his make-up he conformed to the English tradition so far as to wear Hamlet's black cloak. Otherwise he was an innovator. He wore rowing shorts, puttees, and a pair of football boots; also a big pistol in his girdle, such as highwaymen used to carry, and, fully exposed like a decoration, a large gun-metal watch and chain over his heart. We supposed at first from its calibre that the watch was merely a decoration, but this was not the case. It had a dramatic value too. You remember the famous lines in Act III. :

""Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on."

Well, Hamlet wanted to make quite sure that it was the very witching time of night when he could drink hot blood, and he consulted the gun-metal

watch accordingly. There was a pleasing accuracy about this that seems to indicate that the actor took the view that Hamlet's madness was only feigned.

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What with the watch and the pistol, Hamlet's was a sporting rather than a historical make up, and I think Akhtar (Horatio) was rather envious of it. He was somewhat of a Job's comforter, but nothing was likely to quell Hamlet's mourning. In Bengal it had to be of a pristine ceremonial order. There was no possible doubt about its intensity. He simply "waked" his Father, and, with the assistance of the harmonium, approached the banshee at its best. One felt that some action was bound to ensue, and Act II. was in the circumstances a little disappointing. Here is the syllabus of it

"At the opening of the second act Farrukh in court putting on the guise of anxiety for Jahangir's safety shows concerns and enquires. Man

soor the Wazirzada falls in love with Meharbano. Suleman enters and a conversation passes on. Akhtar recounts the accident of the grave to Suleman. Seeing Jahangir entering, Suleman withdraws. Akhtar questions Jahangir who confides him with the disclosure. Mansoor in frenzy declares his love for her."

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Shakespearian clown Indian- that of the men. It would ised. Later he became the not have been proper, or, First Gravedigger. The thing presumably, like real life. This about him was that he was took away a good deal of the a black man, not a brown interest of Ophelia, who had one. That was the comedy her chance in Act IV., as the of him. The audience laughed programme showswhen they saw him. Everything he said was a joke. I could not make out quite what his relations were to the other characters, but I do not think they greatly mattered. The clown may enter anywhere. He gives relief, and in this act one was grateful for relief. The acting was all very emotionally pronounced, and the harmonium was at his most energetic.

"With next scene we come to a

room where the Queen is seen merrymaking with Farrukh. Then enters Humayun the Lord Chamberlain who, soon after, is despatched to console the Prince. The Queen, then, gives publicity to her union with Farrukh. Meanwhile the Wazir tries to solace the Prince who hears him with flightiness and cynical disdain, and pours forth in soliloqy his horror at his Mother's marriage."

"Soliloqy" hardly expresses the prolonged and rampant vocalism to which Hamlet, undeterred by the harmonium and the tom-tom, treated us. But here again, of course, his horror had to be very great. Not only was his Queen Mother marrying her husband's murderer, but she was remarrying; and to a Hindu Hamlet a widow's marriage would justify any outburst. The Queen's action represented shamelessness and passion, or was supposed to; but none of the women in the play showed any emotion comparable with

love for Jahangir. Her maids-of"Meharbano's giving went to her honour soothing her. Jahangir's going to his Father's grave. Akhtar's and Suleman's oversighting him. The openning of the grave. The appearing of the Ghost and informing him of his death.”

Meharbano gave, it seemed to me, the very meekest possible "went" to her love for Jahangir, and her maids-ofhonour had little or no difficulty in soothing her, though they spread their consolations over a considerable period. Meharbano was a small artiste, with the voice of a fieldmouse. She had on a cherrycoloured satin dress, which reached barely to her knees, and-with a view to captivating Hamlet, no doubt a pair of European black stockings. No shoes. The exceedingly loose fit of the stockings led to an unintentional piece of by play at one point. She was giving "went " to her love by squeezing a tiny pockethandkerchief, of which she made a good deal of use throughout, passing it through her fingers and laying it on her breast, when she accidentally dropped it. In Bengal, when you drop a thing, there is no bothering to stoop and pick it up. You use your foot. One of the courtiers-not very courteously-nudged Ophelia, and pointed to the fallen hand

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kerchief. Absent-mindedly she put out one big toe at it gracefully, half raised it, and then had the mortification of seeing it fall again. She had forgotten her stockings, prisoned in which her prehensile toe had lost its cunning. She had to bend down to get it. If this act gave Ophelia her opportunity, it also gave Hamlet his-at the graveside. That was after the appearance of the Ghost, who looked, it must be allowed, more English than the rest of the dramatis persona, and had a fairly good speaking part. Roused by his tale, Hamlet did a sword - dance, preparatory to taking vengeance. It was a great effort, that dance, lasting roughly for ten minutes, Hamlet doing Indian clubs with his sword, and shrieking at the top of his voice throughout. The young man at the harmonium appeared to be really moved by it, and, as it were, challenged Hamlet to musical combat. The conclusion was a foregone one. Hamlet did his best, and it was a good best, but a man cannot contend with a harmonium indefinitely. The young instrumentalist reduced Hamlet to a hoarse impotence in the end, and went on by himself for a minute or two, just to show what an agony of organ notes the harmonium can give forth when the master wills it. After this, Act V., though full of incident, seemed in its way quiet. The following events took place—

"Mansoor's and Sahelin's jesting with each other in the way. His going in the garden with their help.

Declaring his love to Meharbano. and his killing Mansoor. Coming of Her declining. Coming of Jahangir everyone in the Tamasagah. Farrukh and Jahangir witnessing performance. The death of all."

The programme is not perfectly clear. As far as I remember, it was Mansoor who got into the garden "with their help." Anyhow he was in the garden, and Jahangir came and killed him. He killed him by coming up behind and shooting him in the back with a shiny new rook rifle. Someone must have given Jahangir the rook rifle at the end of Act IV., perhaps instead of a bouquet. I feel sure he had not possessed it before, or he would have brought it on. The wound produced by it, besides being mortal, was of a very painful nature, and Mansoor depicted it with consummate skill. Indeed, apart from Hamlet's sword-dance, and the death of all, which followed later, there was nothing more appreciated by the audience. On the English stage deaths are for the most part swift, if dramatic. In Italian opera they take longer very often, but the efforts of the artistes are concentrated rather upon getting their notes out successfully than upon depicting the postures and writhings in unduly harrowing last throes. Singers are too careful of themselves, and, as a rule, too stout to writhe convincingly. There were no such disabilities here. Mansoor had set a sublime example, and all, when death came upon them, strove to equal his performance. I do

not know why the death of all occurred, but it did so quite suddenly-I should say, it began to do so quite suddenly,and, though it came in the form of the poison cup, pistol shots, and the stab of a dagger, it came with similar lingering, writhing, hair-raising preliminaries. Ophelia retained her breath the longest, and there was in her end a distinct touch of the star actress. She had stabbed herself in good time with a very large stage dagger wrought of wood and silver paper which puckered, but she reserved her death for the last. She allowed about a quarter of an hour for the others to writhe, and then staggered to the front and was about to fall. A difficulty presented itself. The stage was so packed with the dead bodies that space adequate for the decease of the heroine was lacking, at any rate in the front. Ophelia showed the practical common-sense that has before now distinguished artistes. Nothing daunted by the affair of the handkerchief, she again used her foot to kick one of the crowd in the ribs. With one of those convulsive spasms that have been known to occur even after death, he jerked himself to one side. Hamlet was the other too forward corpse, but a poke in his ribs enabled him to perform the same phenomenon. Then Ophelia could really abandon herself to die, and did so.

...

There was sustained applause from the whole theatre, particularly from the front row

of the stalls, and, after it was over, Mr Chundar, who had been busy between the acts handing us chocolate and biscuits, came up to find out what we thought of the performance.

"You like it? You think it was well acted?" he asked us, smiling, but with an anxious eye on the Rajah at the same time.

We all declared that we liked it immensely, and that it had been acted very finely indeed, and Mr Chundar's smile expanded and expanded. Only the Rajah had yet to speak, and he, judging that we had been pleased and satisfied, and that none of the failure attaching to the camel races could be assigned to this performance, said with complacence, "Yes. It was well acted. You shall tell the company that they did well." And he added courteously to me, who sat on one side of him, "It is a good little play. Yes."

Next moment the band outside struck up "God save the King" for positively the last time, and to these loyal strains we walked out into the Bengal night. It was a lovely night. The stars glittered from a black velvet sky, and in the starlight, as we drove back, we could see the shrouded Bengalis shuffling home along the dusty road. Though we had, all of us, been seeing Shakespeare's "Hamlet," I had the strange feeling that we were moving in some time and place that were pre-Shakespearian.

R. E. VERNÈDE.

THE BALLAD OF BROWN YVES.

A BRETON LEGEND.

BROWN YVES, the Brésic ferryman,
Sat idle by the shore.

For ten long days he had not felt
The pull of creaking oar.

For over on the Josselin side
Had fall'n a heavy hand,
And thro' each village far and wide
Plague ravaged the fair land.

The Sieur de Brésic sent for Yves—
The great Lord Abbot too-
"Ferry no soul across, Brown Yves,
Lest death should come with you."

"Ferry no soul across, my son,
Lest evil should befall,

For if the White Plague come to us
May God protect us all."

Then to the Josselin river-bank

Fled folk the long days through. "Nay," said Brown Yves, "ye may not cross Lest Death should travel too."

Big Michel pleaded for his wife,
Young Jehane for her child,

And when Brown Yves refused them all
They cursed him loud and wild.

He left his boat beside the sedge,
And turned to go away,

But something always drew him back
Throughout each heavy day.

'Twas silent, silent as the grave. No melody of bird,

No chirp of insect in the grass,

Nor any sound he heard,

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