aware, through the poignancy of his personality, of what one might call the voice of the modern conscience.  To associate that thrillingly beautiful and profound voice of his with anything that sounds so prosaic as a “modern conscience” may seem unkind, but actually our modern conscience is anything but prosaic, and combines within it something at once poetic and prophetic, of which that something ghostly in Forbes-Robertson’s acting is peculiarly expressive.  That quality of other-worldliness which at once scared and fascinated the lodgers in The Passing of the Third Floor Back is present in all Forbes-Robertson’s acting.  It was that which strangely stirred us, that first night of The Profligate.  We meet it again with the blind Dick Heldar in The Light That Failed, and of course we meet it supremely in Hamlet.  In fact, it is that quality which, chief among others, makes Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet the classical Hamlet of his time.

Forbes-Robertson has of course played innumerable parts.  Years before The Profligate, he had won distinction as the colleague of Irving and Mary Anderson.  He may be said to have played everything under the sun.  His merely theatric experience has thus enriched and equipped his temperament with a superb technique.  It would probably be impossible for him to play any part badly, and of the various successes he has made, to which his present repertoire bears insufficient witness, others, as I have said, can point out the excellences.  My concern here is with his art in its fullest and finest expression, in its essence; and therefore it is unnecessary for me to dwell upon any other of his impersonations than that of Hamlet.  When a man can play Hamlet so supremely, it may be taken for granted, I presume, that he can play Mice and Men, or even that masterpiece of all masterpieces, Caesar and Cleopatra.  I trust that it is no disrespect to the distinguished authors of these two plays to say that such plays in a great actor’s repertoire represent less his versatility than his responsibilities, that pot-boiling necessity which hampers every art, and that of the actor, perhaps, most of all.

To my thinking, the chief interest of all Forbes-Robertson’s other parts is that they have “fed” his Hamlet; and, indeed, many of his best parts may be said to be studies for various sides of Hamlet, his fine Romeo, for example, which, unfortunately, he no longer plays.  In Hamlet all his qualities converge, and in him the tradition of the stage that all an ambitious actor’s experience is only to fit him to play Hamlet is for once justified.  But, of course, the chief reason of that success is that nature meant Forbes-Robertson to play Hamlet.  Temperament, personality, experience, and training have so worked together that he does not merely play, but is, Hamlet.  Such, at all events, is the complete illusion he is able to produce.