Refreshingly different from recent productions of "Hamlet" is Mr. Sothern's performance at the Opera House this week. There has been a tendency on the part of other notable Shaksperian actors to subordinate the play to the part, a venture as dangerous as it is selfish. Mr. Sothern, while of neccessity cutting liberally to make the play manageable in an evening, achieves a smooth and rapid plot-development, together with a sustained high standard of acting rarely seen in this drama. An unusually capable and well-balanced cast assists materially in avoiding the too common effect of a series of inspired monologues by Hamlet, strung on a slender thread of mediocre art. The resulting impression is far better entertainment, and affords a truer impression of the tragedy as it was written to be played.

Mr. Sothern's Hamlet is appealing because of the utter despondency and unrelieved pathos in which he plays it, yet though it strains the sympathy of the observer almost to the breaking point it fails to arouse a feeling of fellowship. The sad compassion one feels for the miserable unfortunates of another world than ours is roused by this Hamlet because of this very height and monotony of suffering--no mere mortal could bear it without either involuntary reaction or complete dissolution. For this reason by far the most effective appeal is made in the moments after Hamlet has trapped his uncle into betrayal of guilt, when the long strain of hideous uncertainty and brooding breaks at last and a tortured human mind gives way to reaction. For that one brief interval Hamlet is one of us who has suffered to the top of his bent and lost control--he laughs, capers, and altogether offers a more convincing counterfeit of madness than the actors unchanging tragic mask allowed his most deliberate efforts. A little more of lightness, at those points where the author saw their need, might bring this demi-god to our level.

As always, Miss Marlowe is charming, and as Ophelia she is heart-gripping. This too, with a restraint and softness that make her misfortunes all the more real, for by them she seems deprived of even the spirit to voice her pain.

It is source of unwaining pleasure to see the burden of the action slip from the chief actor to the subordinates without a sickening sense of unintended comic relief, even without any unpleasant realization that they are subordinates. To Horatio, always a sympathetic part, Mr. Lewis brings a personality and a voice that suggest more than a little of the charm which bound Hamlet to him. So small a part as the First Player was made memorable by Mr. Collamores delivery of Aeneas' tale to Dido, and his ability subtly to distinguish the interwoven parts he played. As for Polonius, though his part was considerably shortened it still gave Mr. Peters opportunity to present the Lord Chamberlain as Shakepere conceived him--an aged but still efficient courtier and diplomat, ready with counsel and device, but kindly humoring the vagrant fancy of the young prince--not the doddering burlesque of age with which many an actor sets on some quantity of the barren spectators to laugh.