AustLit

The 'Literature & Art' column reproduces a paragraph from the London Athenaeum's 'Our Weekly Gossip' column of 14 December 1867: 809. The Athenaeum reports: 'Melbourne has been amusing itself with the question, "Was Hamlet Mad?" It arose out of Mr. Walter Montgomery's interpretation of the Dane. Five gentlemen ... have been vigorously arguing for, against, and for a little to be said on both sides ... What halcyon days for Melbourne when lawyers and medical men have leisure to discuss a question which Shakespeare himself, perhaps, would have been puzzled to elucidate!'

The 'Literature & Art' column also notes various additional items of literary interest; these are sourced from a range of British and American journals.

An advertisement for the published collection of newspaper correspondence, Was Hamlet Mad?: Being a Series of Critiques on the Acting of the Late Walter Montgomery, available from the publisher and bookseller H. T. Dwight.

The Australasian cites '"Jaques" who writes "Readings by Starlight" in the London Evening Star. Jaques had made mention of Was Hamlet Mad?, edited by R. H. Horne.

In the Australasian's quotation, Jaques says that 'at Melbourne, the genius of Shakespeare has set half the literary folk at loggerheads on the pretended madness of Hamlet'. He continues: 'One must say that not only are the Melbourne people the originators of the critical combat, but that they manage their controversy with more tact, learning, reading, and humour, than our men do. In this they are certainly true to their bold and spirit-stirring motto, "Advance Australia".'

The Home News reports on 'a controversy [that] has taken place in the columns of the Melbourne Argus on the question, 'Was Hamlet mad?' and it has been republished in the form of a pamphlet that will be prized by Shakespearians as a repertory of arguments upon a question of equal literary and psychological interest.'

The column concludes: 'Our contemporary, the Melbourne Argus, is to be congratulated on having been the means of initiating and concluding a discussion which shows the busy community of the capital of Victoria to be interested in the same questions in art and literature that interest ourselves; and in having shown, further, that such debates are carried on with equal skill and intelligence.'