This
is the main dramatic point; the thread is very slender, and is drawn
out to its utmost limits through five acts of blank verse. The
language and metre are scrupulously correct. But one cannot credit the
play with any touch of poetry or imagination. It presents a trite
theme tamely and prosaically. Congenital inability of the most
inveterate toughness to appreciate dramatic poetry could alone account
for a mention of the _Adventures of Five Hours_ in the same breath
with _Othello_.
Pepys did not again fall so low as this. The only other tragedy of
Shakespeare which he saw in its authentic purity moved him,
contradictorily, to transports of unqualified delight. One is glad to
recall that _Hamlet_, one of the greatest of Shakespeare's plays,
received from Pepys ungrudging commendation. Pepys's favourable
opinion of _Hamlet_ is to be assigned to two causes. One is the
literary and psychological attractions of the piece; the other, and
perhaps the more important, is the manner in which the play was
interpreted on the stage of Pepys's time.
Pepys is not the only owner of a prosaic mind who has found
satisfaction in Shakespeare's portrait of the Prince of Denmark.
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