now, but they made a great sensation in the
year nothing, and the court of King Ruric
was often convulsed with laughter on hearing
of "Hamlet's last." Indeed, there is no doubt
that Hamlet and Yorick were historically one
and the same person.

However, delightful as the mad prince's
jokes were considered by other persons, they
were not liked by his uncle, Fengo, who
always suspected that some mischief was
brooding, and was determined to worm out
his nephew's real character. He, therefore,
by the counsel of a friend, feigned to leave
the country on some urgent matter, that
during his supposed absence, Hamlet might
have an interview with his mother, at
which the same friend engaged to be present,
unseen. The interview took place, and
Fengo's friend, according to promise, hid
himself under a heap of straw, that constituted
an important part of the furniture of the
royal apartment. With his usual shrewdness
Hamlet guessed there was something wrong
in the room, and to ascertain whether his
suspicions were correct, danced upon the
straw, clapping his hands and crowing like a
cock, to the great astonishment of his
mother and to the infinite annoyance of the
listening friend, who had to endure all
the weight of the prince's eccentricities.
Naturally enough something began to move
beneath the straw, and that something—
which the reader may, if he pleases, call
Polonius—was immediately transfixed by
the sword of Hamlet. Queen Gerutha,
shocked at this new manifestation of
madness, began to weep aloud, but Hamlet,
dropping the mask, read her a severe lecture
on the impropriety of her position. His
words seemed to have an effect, as, indeed,
well they might, for they were marked by a
ruffianly coarseness which could not be
exceeded, and of which Shakspeare does not
convey the slightest idea. In the fullest
sense of the expression, Hamlet gave his
mother a " bit of his mind," and a very
unsavoury bit of a very gross mind it was.

Fengo, on his return, missed his friend, for
Hamlet had not only killed that most
unfortunate of courtiers, but had boiled down his
limbs, and thrown them into the sewer to be
devoured by the pigs. This deed the prince
openly avowed, but those who heard him
merely thought that he was uttering one of
his mad pleasantries, and laughed as usual.
Indeed, at the court of Jutland everybody
seems to have been an arrant blockhead, with
the single exception of Fengo himself. That
worthy viceroy would have killed his nephew
without further ado, had he not feared to
offend King Ruric, who, as we have seen,
was the lad's maternal grandfather. To get
rid of Hamlet stratagem was necessary, and
accordingly the good youth was sent on an
embassy to Britain—a proceeding which, as
he was a reputed maniac, must have been
deemed highly complimentary to the British
court. Two Danish gentlemen whom—the
reader may, if he pleases, call Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern—were, moreover, appointed
to accompany him, and they secretly carried
with them (by turns, we presume), a bit of
wood, with certain letters carved upon it,
requesting the king of Britain to put Hamlet
to death. It may be observed that, in the
days of King Ruric, bits of carved wood were
the approved means for carrying on an
epistolary correspondence. With all that
cleverness that seems to have been inherent
in the Jutland Court, the two confidential
gentlemen went to sleep one night in Hamlet's
presence with the precious document in one
of their pockets. Of course the pockets were
rummaged by the artful prince, and of course
he found the wooden dispatch, which he had
no sooner read than he shaved off the inscription
and carved another, in which he not
only named the two sleepers as the persons
to be killed, but also forged a request from
Fengo, that the king of Britain would be
kind enough to give his daughter to Hamlet
for a wife.

The policy pursued by Hamlet during his
sojourn in Britain was the very reverse of
that which he had adopted while he was at
home in Jutland. Among the Danes he
wished to pass for a fool or a madman; by the
Britons he wished to be thought a model of
wisdom. He first excited the general wonder
by refusing to taste a single morsel, or to
drink a single drop at the very munificent
banquet which the king of Britain had
provided for his reception. Indeed, so much
was the hospitable monarch surprised by an
abstinence so unusual in the good old times,
that when Hamlet and his attendants had
retired to their sleeping-apartment he ordered
one of his servants to listen at the door, and
pick up as much as he could of the conversation.
Hamlet's attendants, who shared the
general curiosity, no sooner found themselves
alone with him, than they inquired into the
cause of his mysterious abstinence. He
quietly told them that the bread was stained
with blood, that the drink tasted of iron, and
that the meat smelt like a human corpse—
all good and weighty reasons for not making
a hearty meal. His companions further
asked him what he thought of the king and
queen of Britain; and his answer showed
that his opinion of the illustrious pair was
not very exalted. The king, he said, had the
eyes of a serf, and as for the queen, she
betrayed her slavish origin by three distinct
signs.

Now, the king of Britain was naturally
of a kindly and pacific disposition, with
the additional qualification of that laudable
spirit of curiosity that in later days has been
styled the desire for knowledge. So, instead
of flying into a passion when his servants
informed him of Hamlet's disrespectful
observations, he thought they were worthy
of a cool and serious inquiry. Beginning