Word: ophelia
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This Elizabethan miscellany, familiar to Shakespeare and containing a ballad which may have provided Ophelia with snatches of her mad scene, is now reprinted for modern readers and students, in a pleasing edition which follows the original pagination, punctuation, and division of lines. "The Handful of Pleasant Delights", says the editor, "contains nothing but ballads, all of which and, before their collection in miscellany, been printed on breadsides, so that it is a bit surprising to see how unanimous is the price given to it." Whether the present reprint should prove more tempting to student of special topics...
There followed a series of pretenders to the throne--men like the lesser Roman emperors who fill up the gaps in the annals. At last Beerbohm Tree, in the name of variety, appeared as a red-headed, red-bewhiskered Hamlet, but failed. With no ghost and no Ophelia it is conceivable that a sandy lunatic might have been a great hit. Next the gentle Forbes-Robertson carried off the laurels with a kind of paradoxical, superplussed magnetism. Then, after Southern's admirable elocution and Walter Hampden's colloquialism -- which doesn't at all describe his acting--we come to Barrymore...
...seems that success in acting the part is largely accidental. An actor stalks up and down the stage, and the audience is enthralled. Or he steps gracefully, chides his mother considerately, and soothes his Ophelia, and what can the easy-going audience do--save applaud. Success appears a tyrant, and arbitrary both as concerns actors and audiences...
...story concerns the doings of young Rolo Webster, who has great aspirations to act Hamlet, and accordingly employs the services of Mr. Stein, a theatrical manager, in order to produce Shakespeare in New York. His sudden attraction for Goldie MacDuff, who is cast as Ophelia, and a grandfather who would much rather see Rollo interested in air-brakes than in acting, cause complications in the plot; while the attempt of Rollo's company to produce Hamlet brings in the farcical element. In places the farce is carried a little too far, and the unreality of it makes it less effective...
...always, Miss Marlowe is charming, and as Ophelia she is heart-gripping. This too, with a restraint and softness that make her misfortunes all the more real, for by them she seems deprived of even the spirit to voice her pain...