In a recent lecture delivered at the Shakspere Tercentenary Celebration at Princeton, Mr. Alfred Noyes, the famous English poet, and a professor at Princeton, advanced a new theory regarding the immortal "Hamlet" of Shakspere.

The lecture was called "The Spirit of Touchstone," and in it, Mr. Noyes declared that "Hamlet was not mad, nor was he pretending to be mad; he was putting on the disposition of the Fool in order to strike at the insincerity and unreality of the world about him. Hamlet derived his disposition from his former friend, Yorrick, the court jester, which friendship is emphasized and illustrated in the play by Hamlet's sad reminiscences in the grave-digger's scene."

"With the sole exception of Hamlet, no other character in all of Shakspere's plays, who does not definitely take the part of a Fool, wears trappings, which were a part of the conventional garb of the Court Fool," declared Mr. Noyes. "This and numerous other instances throughout the play lead me to believe that Shakspere meant to typify in Harlet the 'Wise Fool' of the early English courts at his greatest point of development."

Mr. Noyes believes that Hamlet, with his intellectual ecstacy, was merely an apotheosis of Shakspere's former creation. Touchstone the Fool. Mr. Noyes maintained that it is difficult to conceive how critics could support the madness of Hamlet in the face of the fact that Shakspere himself ridicules other characters in the play for holding this same belief. In their swift, subtle phrases, modified by infinite jest and exquisite fancy, Hamlet and Touchstone can be identified as one and the same creation; and their further loyalty to love, and love for worship, seal their close relationship.