At the Fancy, we saw “Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy’s Ghost and Nunky’s Pison,” which is all very well—­but, gentlemen, if you don’t respect Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil?  The palace and ramparts of Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg’s finest efforts.  The banqueting hall of the palace is illuminated:  the peaks and gables glitter with the snow:  the sentinels march blowing their fingers with the cold—­the freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and dexterously arranged:  the snow-storm rises:  the winds howl awfully along the battlements:  the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore.  Hamlet’s umbrella is whirled away in the storm.  He and his two friends stamp on each other’s toes to keep them warm.  The storm-spirits rise in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks.  My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air!  As the storm reaches its height (here the wind instruments come in with prodigious effect, and I compliment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos)—­as the snow-storm rises, (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends a shiver into your very boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds deepen (bong, bong, bong, from the violoncellos).  The forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins—­and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges howling into the water again.

Hamlet’s mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son.  The storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires screaming in pattens.

The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are seen to drive off, and several people are drowned.  The gas-lamps along the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot through the troubled air.  Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars and pours!  The darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the power of the music—­and see—­in the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air and wave—­what is that ghastly figure moving hither?  It becomes bigger, bigger, as it advances down the platform—­more ghastly, more horrible, enormous!  It is as tall as the whole stage.  It seems to be advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the ghost of the late Hamlet comes in, and begins to speak.  Several people faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the darkness.