is thoroughly appreciated in Italy.  Our audiences would not endure the altered and garbled versions of the French stage.  Rouviere once undertook to play in Italy the version of Hamlet constructed by the elder Dumas and M. V——.  When, in the last act, the Ghost appeared to tell Hamlet Tu vivras, the audience rose en masse and fairly shouted and jeered the performers off the stage.  It is in Germany, however, that Shakespeare is best known and understood.  The very bootblacks in the street know all about him and his greatest works.”

The fact now came out that Rossi is an accomplished linguist.  He reads and understands both English and German, though he speaks neither language.  French he speaks as fluently as he does Italian, and he is also versed in Spanish.  He spoke rapturously of the German Shakespeare (Schlegel’s translation), declaring that he considered it nearly equal to the original.

“Next to Shakespeare, but at a great distance below him, I would rank Moliere,” said Rossi in answer to a query from one of the guests.  “Moliere has given us real types of character and real humor.  But he was the man of his epoch, not for all time.  He has painted for us the men and manners of his day and generation:  he did not take all humanity for a study.  Therefore, his works appear old-fashioned on the modern stage, while those of Shakespeare will never seem faded or out of date.”

“What a wonder, what a marvel was Shakespeare!  He was an Englishman born and bred, yet he turns to Italy and paints for us a picture of Italian life and love such as no Italian hand has ever drawn.  His heart throbs, his imagination glows, with all the fire and fervor of the South.  He depicts for us a Moor, an African, and the sun of Africa scorches his brain and inflames his passions.”

“And Hamlet,” I remarked, “is thoroughly of the North—­a German even, rather than Englishman.”

“To me,” answered Rossi, “Hamlet represents no nationality and no one type of character.  He is the image of humanity.  Hamlet is to me not a man, but Man.  The sufferings, the doubts, the vague mysteries of life are incarnate in his person.  He is ever checked by the Unknown.  He is tortured by the phantasm of Doubt.  Is the spectre indeed his father’s shade? has it spoken truth? is it well to live? is it best to die?—­such are the problems that perplex his brain.”

“To be or not to be—­that is the question; but it is only one of the questions that haunt his soul.”

“A distinguished English actor who had come to Paris to see me act once asked me why, in the first scene with the Ghost, I betray no terror, while in the scene with the Queen I crouch in affright behind a chair, wild with alarm, the moment the phantom appears.  I answered that in the first scene the Ghost comes before Hamlet as the image of a beloved and lamented parent, while in the second-named instance he appears as an embodiment of conscience.  For Hamlet has disobeyed the mandate of the spectre:  he has dared to threaten and upbraid his mother.