Cleveland, O., Oct. 27, 1886.

Last evening I went to hear Mr. Edwin Booth in "Hamlet." I had read the play before, but it was better as he gave it, I think.

The play of "Hamlet" is not catchy, and there is a noticeable lack of local gags in it. A gentleman who stood up behind me and leaned against his breath all the evening said that he thought Ophelia's singing was too disconnected. He is a keen observer and has seen a great many plays. He went out frequently between the acts, and always came back in better spirits. He noticed that I wept a little in one or two places, and said that if I thought that was affecting I ought to see "Only a Farmer's Daughter." He drives a 'bus for the Hollenden Hotel here and has seen a great deal of life. Still, he talked freely with me through the evening, and told me what was coming next. He is a great admirer of the drama, and night after night he may be seen in the foyer, accompanied only by his breath.

There is considerable discussion among critics as to whether Hamlet was really insane or not, but I think that he assumed it in order to throw the prosecution off the track, for he was a very smart man, and when his uncle tried to work off some of his Danish prevarications on him I fully expected him to pull a card out of his pocket and present it to his royal tallness, on which might be seen the legend:

I AM SOMETHING OF A LIAR MYSELF!

But I am glad he did not, for it would have seemed out of character in a play like that.

Mr. Booth wore a dark, water-proof cloak all the evening and a sword with which he frequently killed people. He was dressed in black throughout, with hair of the same shade. He is using the same hair in "Hamlet" that he did twenty years ago, though he uses less of it. He wears black knickerbockers and long, black, crockless stockings.

Mr. Booth is doing well in the acting business, frequently getting as high as $2 apiece for tickets to his performances. He was encored by the audience several times last night, but refrained from repeating the play, fearing that it would make it late for those who had to go back to Belladonna, O., after the close of the entertainment.

Toward the end of the play a little rough on rats gets into the elderberry wine and the royal family drink it, after which there is considerable excitement, and a man with a good, reliable stomach-pump would have all he could do. Several of the royal family curl up and perish.

They do not die in the house.

During an interview between Hamlet and his mother an old gentleman who has the honor to be Ophelia's father hides behind a picket fence, so as to overhear the conversation. He gets excited and says something in a low, gutteral tone of voice, whereupon Hamlet runs his sword through the picket fence in such a way as to bore a large hole into the old man, who then dies.

I have heard a great many people speak the piece beginning—

To be or not to be,

but Mr. Booth does it better than any one I have ever heard. I once heard an elocutionist—kind of a smart Alickutionist as my friend The Hoosier Poet would say. This man recited "To be or not to be" in a manner which, he said, had frequently brought tears to eyes unused to weep. He recited it with his right hand socked into his bosom up to the elbow and his fair hair tossed about over his brow. His teeming brain, which claimed to be kind of a four-horse teaming brain, as it were, seemed to be on fire, and to all appearances he was indeed mad. So were the people who listened to him. He hissed it through his clinched teeth and snorted it through his ripe, red nose, wailed it up into the ceiling, and bleated it down the aisles, rolled it over and over against the rafters of his reverberating mouth, handed it out in big capsules, or hissed it through his puckered atomizer of a mouth, wailed and bellowed like a wild and maddened tailless steer in fly-time, darted across the stage like a headless hen, ripped the gentle atmosphere into shreds with his guinea-hen voluntary, bowed to us, and teetered off the stage.

Mr. Booth does not hoist his shoulders and settle back on his "pastern jints" like a man who is about to set a refractory brake on a coal car, neither does he immerse his right arm in his bosom up to the second joint. He seems to have the idea that Hamlet spoke these lines mostly because he felt like saying something instead of doing it to introduce a set of health-lift gestures and a hoarse, baritone snort.

A head of dank hair, a low, mellow, union-depot tone of voice, and a dark-blue, three sheet poster will not make a successful Hamlet, and blessed be the man who knows this without experimenting on the people till he has bunions on his immortal soul. I have sent a note to Mr. Booth this morning asking him to call at my room, No. 6-5/8, and saying that I would give him my idea about the drama from a purely unpartisan standpoint, but it is raining so fast now that I fear he will not be able to come.