In concluding the discussion we ventured to ask His Highness for his autograph. The Prince, who has perhaps a more exquisite sense of humour than any other sovereign of Europe, declared with a laugh that he had no pen. Still roaring over this inimitable drollery, we begged the Prince to honour us by using our own fountain-pen.

"Is there any ink in it?" asked the Prince--which threw us into a renewed paroxysm of laughter.

The Prince took the pen and very kindly autographed for us seven photographs of himself. He offered us more, but we felt that seven was about all we could use. We were still suffocated with laughter over the Prince's wit; His Highness was still signing photographs when an equerry appeared and whispered in the Prince's ear. His Highness, with the consummate tact to be learned only at a court, turned quietly without a word and left the room.

We never, in all our experience, remember seeing a prince--or a mere man for the matter of that--leave a room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch of finality about it--a hint that the entire proceeding was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circ.u.mstance. He did not come back.

We understand that he appeared later in the morning at a civic reception in the costume of an Alpine Jaeger, and attended the matinee in the dress of a lieutenant of police.

Meantime he has our pen. If he turns up in any costume that we can spot at sight, we shall ask him for it.

II. WITH OUR GREATEST ACTOR

That is to say, with Any One of our Sixteen Greatest Actors

It was within the privacy of his own library that we obtained--need we say with infinite difficulty--our interview with the Great Actor. He was sitting in a deep arm-chair, so buried in his own thoughts that he was oblivious of our approach. On his knee before him lay a cabinet photograph of himself. His eyes seemed to be peering into it, as if seeking to fathom its unfathomable mystery. We had time to note that a beautiful carbon photogravure of himself stood on a table at his elbow, while a magnificent half-tone pastel of himself was suspended on a string from the ceiling. It was only when we had seated ourself in a chair and taken out our notebook that the Great Actor looked up.

"An interview?" he said, and we noted with pain the weariness in his tone. "Another interview!"

We bowed.

"Publicity!" he murmured rather to himself than to us. "Publicity! Why must one always be forced into publicity?"

It was not our intention, we explained apologetically, to publish or to print a single word--

"Eh, what?" exclaimed the Great Actor. "Not print it? Not publish it?

Then what in--"

Not, we explained, without his consent.

"Ah," he murmured wearily, "my consent. Yes, yes, I must give it. The world demands it. Print, publish anything you like. I am indifferent to praise, careless of fame. Posterity will judge me. But," he added more briskly, "let me see a proof of it in time to make any changes I might care to."

We bowed our a.s.sent.

"And now," we began, "may we be permitted to ask a few questions about your art? And first, in which branch of the drama do you consider that your genius chiefly lies, in tragedy or in comedy?"

"In both," said the Great Actor.

"You excel then," we continued, "in neither the one nor the other?"

"Not at all," he answered, "I excel in each of them."

"Excuse us," we said, "we haven't made our meaning quite clear. What we meant to say is, stated very simply, that you do not consider yourself better in either of them than in the other?"

"Not at all," said the Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine forehead. "Not at all. I do better in both of them. My genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time."

"Ah," we said, as a light broke in upon us, "then that, we presume, is the reason why you are about to appear in Shakespeare?"

The Great Actor frowned.

"I would rather put it," he said, "that Shakespeare is about to appear in me."

"Of course, of course," we murmured, ashamed of our own stupidity.

"I appear," went on the Great Actor, "in _Hamlet_. I expect to present, I may say, an entirely new Hamlet."

"A new Hamlet!" we exclaimed, fascinated. "A new Hamlet! Is such a thing possible?"

"Entirely," said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine head forward again. "I have devoted years of study to the part. The whole conception of the part of Hamlet has been wrong."

We sat stunned.

"All actors. .h.i.therto," continued the Great Actor, "or rather, I should say, all so-called actors--I mean all those who tried to act before me--have been entirely mistaken in their presentation. They have presented Hamlet as dressed in black velvet."

"Yes, yes," we interjected, "in black velvet, yes!"

"Very good. The thing is absurd," continued the Great Actor, as he reached down two or three heavy volumes from the shelf beside him. "Have you ever studied the Elizabethan era?"

"The which?" we asked modestly.

"The Elizabethan era?"

We were silent.

"Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?"

We hung our head.

"If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly ridiculous. In Shakespeare's day--as I could prove in a moment if you had the intelligence to understand it--there was no such thing as black velvet. It didn't exist."

"And how then," we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet delighted, "do _you_ present Hamlet?"

"In _brown_ velvet," said the Great Actor.

"Great Heavens," we exclaimed, "this is a revolution."

"It is. But that is only one part of my conception. The main thing will be my presentation of what I may call the psychology of Hamlet."

"The psychology!" we said.

"Yes," resumed the Great Actor, "the psychology. To make Hamlet understood, I want to show him as a man bowed down by a great burden. He is overwhelmed with Weltschmerz. He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in fact, everlasting negation lies on him--"

"You mean," we said, trying to speak as cheerfully as we could, "that things are a little bit too much for him."

"His will," went on the Great Actor, disregarding our interruption, "is paralysed. He seeks to move in one direction and is hurled in another.