Art, like law, is the perfection of reason, and whatever is unreasonable in the work of an artist is inartistic.  By the time I had reached these bold conclusions I was ready to deduce a principle from them, and to declare that in a true civilization such a thing as that Hamlet would be forbidden, as an offence against public morals, a violence to something precious and sacred.

In the absence of any public regulation the precious and sacred ideals in the arts must be trusted to the several artists, who bring themselves to judgment when they violate them.  After Mme. Bernhardt was perversely willing to attempt the part of Hamlet, the question whether she did it well or not was of slight consequence.  She had already made her failure in wishing to play the part.  Her wish impugned her greatness as an artist; of a really great actress it would have been as unimaginable as the assumption of a sublime feminine role by a really great actor.  There is an obscure law in this matter which it would be interesting to trace, but for the present I must leave the inquiry with the reader.  I can note merely that it seems somehow more permissible for women in imaginary actions to figure as men than for men to figure as women.  In the theatre we have conjectured how and why this may be, but the privilege, for less obvious reasons, seems yet more liberally granted in fiction.  A woman may tell a story in the character of a man and not give offence, but a man cannot write a novel in autobiographical form from the personality of a woman without imparting the sense of something unwholesome.  One feels this true even in the work of such a master as Tolstoy, whose Katia is a case in point.  Perhaps a woman may play Hamlet with a less shocking effect than a man may play Desdemona, but all the same she must not play Hamlet at all.  That sublime ideal is the property of the human imagination, and may not be profaned by a talent enamoured of the impossible.  No harm could be done by the broadest burlesque, the most irreverent travesty, for these would still leave the ideal untouched.  Hamlet, after all the horse-play, would be Hamlet; but Hamlet played by a woman, to satisfy her caprice, or to feed her famine for a fresh effect, is Hamlet disabled, for a long time, at least, in its vital essence.  I felt that it would take many returns to the Hamlet of Shakespeare to efface the impression of Mme. Bernhardt’s Hamlet; and as I prepared to escape from my row of stalls in the darkening theatre, I experienced a noble shame for having seen the Dane so disnatured, to use Mr. Lowell’s word.  I had not been obliged to come; I had voluntarily shared in the wrong done; by my presence I had made myself an accomplice in the wrong.  It was high ground, but not too high for me, and I recovered a measure of self-respect in assuming it.

THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON