knowing how _to be_, and how _not to be_, for we must fulfil both.
Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his '_Essere, o non essere_'. He
whispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic murder
he was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, and
has known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of the
flesh and the supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is all
unsatisfactory. All his life he has really cringed before the northern
Infinite of the Not-Self, although he has continued in the Italian habit
of Self. But it is mere habit, sham.
How can he know anything about being and not-being when he is only a
maudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to be a maudlin
compromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being nor
riot-being. He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthing
Hamlet's sincere words. He has still to let go, to know what not-being
is, before he can _be_. Till he has gone through the Christian negation
of himself, and has known the Christian consummation, he is a mere
amorphous heap.
For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as the soul of man can go, in
one direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit itself in their
essence. But thank heaven, the bog into which Hamlet struggled is almost
surpassed.
It is a strange thing, if a man covers his face, and speaks with his
eyes blinded, how significant and poignant he becomes. The ghost of this
Hamlet was very simple. He was wrapped down to the knees in a great
white cloth, and over his face was an open-work woollen shawl. But the
naïve blind helplessness and verity of his voice was strangely
convincing. He seemed the most real thing in the play. From the knees
downward he was Laertes, because he had on Laertes' white trousers and
patent leather slippers. Yet he was strangely real, a voice out of
the dark.
The Ghost is really one of the play's failures, it is so trivial and
unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When I
was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see _Hamlet_.
The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. I sat in pale transport.
''Amblet, 'Amblet, I _am_ thy father's ghost.'
Then came a voice from the dark, silent audience, like a cynical knife
to my fond soul:
'Why tha arena, I can tell thy voice.'
The peasants loved Ophelia: she was in white with her hair down her
back. Poor thing, she was pathetic, demented. And no wonder, after
Hamlet's 'O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!' What then of
her young breasts and her womb? Hamlet with her was a very disagreeable
sight. The peasants loved her. There was a hoarse roar, half of
indignation, half of roused passion, at the end of her scene.
The graveyard scene, too, was a great success, but I could not bear
Hamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon. The whole
scene was farcical to me because of the Italian, '_Questo cranio,
Signore_--'And Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of his
black cloak. As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was
unclean. But he looked a fool, hulking himself in his lugubriousness. He
was as self-important as D'Annunzio.
The close fell flat. The peasants had applauded the whole graveyard
scene wildly. But at the end of all they got up and crowded to the
doors, as if to hurry away: this in spite of Enrico's final feat: he
fell backwards, smack down three steps of the throne platform, on to the
stage. But planks and braced muscle will bounce, and Signer Amleto
bounced quite high again.
It was the end of _Amleto_, and I was glad. But I loved the theatre, I
loved to look down on the peasants, who were so absorbed. At the end of
the scenes the men pushed back their black hats, and rubbed their hair
across their brows with a pleased, excited movement. And the women
stirred in their seats.
Just one man was with his wife and child, and he was of the same race as
my old woman at San Tommaso. He was fair, thin, and clear, abstract, of
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