[Page 35.] A silly practice has prevailed amongst Hamlets of uttering the words,

• The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,* as if the idea
had just struck them. Irving makes them partly the culmination of a line of
thought, and partly the natural accompaniment of a most striking action. With an
exuberance exactly corresp>onding in another groove of feeling with the quasi-hysteri-
cal use of his tablets in the First Act, he rushes to a pillar, and, placing his note-
book against it, begins, as the Act-drop descends, to scribble hints for the speech he
means to write.
