SIS 



THEATRE AT PARIS, 



whom cannon-balls rebound. For the britifh Hamlet 

 talks humouroufly with the ghoffc of his father, and 

 wants to fight with him before he has made his ac- 

 quaintance. 



" In the mean time Clodius is contriving the ruin 

 of Hamlet, by all the arts he can devife. His daugh- 

 ter difclofes to him Hamlet's plan, and reprefents with 

 great delicacy the fcope of his cruel undertaking. Her 

 intreaties and remonftrances are flighted. Clodius re- 

 pairs to a gallery of the palace, there to wait for his 

 fellow eonfpirators ; inftead of whom Hamlet fuddenly 

 appears, quite alone. [This fituation feemed to me 

 one of the moll fir iking, but the fentiments were to 

 the laft degree french.] They attack each other : Clo- 

 dius calls aloud for his confederates. They rufh in ; 

 but at that very inflant he falls dead by a ftroke from 

 Hamlet's poignard. They are going to rufh upon 

 Hamlet, but the words : Againfl your king ! inflantly 

 difarm them ; and the curtain falls.' 5 



This flroke, that the words : Againll your king ! 

 fhould have as much weight here with the eonfpirators^ 

 as a cocagne or a bull from the pope would have with 

 a feditious populace in Italy, appears to me likewife 

 highly charadlerillic, and is become frill more fo to- 

 the nation ever li nee the moll beloved of their mo- 

 narchs was flabbed by a fanatic alXaffin. 



Mademoifelle Raucourt did the^ part of the queen* 

 A noble female figure, with flrong and perfectly thea- 

 trical features. She always bowed too low from affecta- 

 tion, which difcovered at once the agitations of her 

 heart, and thole of her bofoin. At fuch times her 



horridly 



