[Footnote 5: But since Voltaire's time, and notably within the present century, the French mind has amply atoned for previous misconceptions, and its tribute to the genius of Shakspeare is rivalling England itself. Germany was earlier in this field; but, if France means to annex Shakspeare, she can afford to let Alsace and Lorraine go. The younger Hugo's study of Hamlet; the volumes of Alfred Mézières, of Philaréte Chasles; the studies of Guizot; the admirable article upon Cleopatra by Henri Blaze de Bury, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, June 15, 1872; another, later, in the same review, upon "Medical Psychology in the Dramas of Shakspeare," &c.,--show a noble disposition and a thorough sympathy.]
[Footnote 6: Obviously the proper reading. Prince Henry says, "This Doll Tear-street should be some road." First noticed by Coleridge.]
In this play it is common to look for an exhibition of humor in the scene of the Grave-diggers; but those personages are only amusing as a couple of common men whose profession seems to have buried both their feelings and their wits. One of them is accidentally witty when he asks, "Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that wilfully seeks her own salvation?" But he and his companion do not make good the promise of this opening text: they turn out to be tedious louts who bring ale-house chatter to a churchyard and only rise to the dignity of being ghastly, although we know that the grave they dig is for Ophelia. We do not properly recollect and feel this till they disappear and the music of the funeral train is heard. Their shovelfuls of dirt and bones make coffin-like cæsuras in their singing, but the songs are too trivial to be trolled over a pot; scarce are they a setting to an empty skull. They rattle so dryly you wish they might be dumped in and covered up. The sexton-riddles have little more juice in them, for they are the kind that boozy gossips clink out of their cans, and not the gay pursuivants of wisdom. We begin to reflect that such triviality does not become interesting because it is well hit off, and that in one respect it is not well hit off, since it recurs too tiresomely; and we are on the point of voting the whole grave-digging business to be a mouldy impertinence, when there flashes upon us the better thought that Shakspeare was here deepening pathos upon the fair maid who must be the tenant of this grave so fatuously dug. To this complexion must we all come at last, and beauty cannot repel the loutish hands which take their fee for shovelling dirt upon its clay.