ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on dramatic literature and theatrical performance of Shakespearian play. The only serious competition that turned up seems to have done it no harm at the box office the appearance of Charles Fechter, whose modern Hamlet had delighted London nine years earlier. Booth himself always enjoyed Fox's burlesques, and his daughter Edwina recalls his particular delight in this spoof of Hamlet. Shakespeare has a very low regard for most of the closet critics of Hamlet, past and present: Many of my so-called beauties have been only the complacencies of writers who wished to wrap themselves in the habiliments of my fame. Sentimentality and self-gratulation united to produce this pretty whimsy in the Spirit of the Times. The statement was addressed to Booth, and its burden is Shakespeare's insistence that from the rising of the curtain until the going down thereof, you are my Hamlet.
