able way, with works with which it is considered—and most rightly—that all Englishmen should be familiar.
But of those who go to a theatre at which a Shakespearian play is presented, how many are aware that the play is not Shakespeare's, but a trimmed and docked and interpolated and mutilated and generally desecrated version of his play? How many are aware that the tragedy of Hamlet, as Shakespeare wrote it, contains about four thousand five hundred lines, of which only about two thousand two hundred are usually delivered on the stage? I shall be told that that is quite enough, and perhaps it is, but how is this sentiment to be reconciled with the enthusiastic veneration in which all people profess to hold the works of Shakespeare? What author can be fairly judged by a play of which one half is deliberately suppressed? Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew contains about three thousand two hundred lines, the "Acting Edition" of this comedy contains only about a thousand! Then, again, how many are aware that in very many cases—I believe I may say in all cases—the actual order of the scenes is changed, merely to provide time and stage-room for elaborate scenic display? If such an outrage were attempted on a play by, say, Mr. Tom Taylor, would it not be regarded as an insult to his memory? When Henry VIII. is presented, it is customary to omit the last two acts—not because they were not written by Shakespeare, but because the star-part, Wolsey, finishes in the last act but two! But who cares? So with the Merchant of Venice. The last act is rarely presented because Shylock is not in it; though, in justice to Mr. Irving, I should
