the flute away, with the exclamation: "S'blood, do you think
I am easier to be played on than a pipe?" the whole theatre rings with
the applause.

Presently, however, we are aware of a gap, a huge hiatus in the
performance; a grave, and yet no grave, for the whole churchyard scene,
with its quaint and exquisite philosophy, the rude wit of the
gravediggers, and the pointed moralising of the prince, are all
wanting--all swept away by the ruthless hand of the critic; skulls and
bones, picks and mattocks, wit and drollery, diggers, waistcoats and all!
Not even _Yorick_, with his "gibes" and "flashes of merriment"--not even
he is spared. On the other hand, a portion of a scene is represented
which, until lately, was always omitted on the English stage. It is that
in which the guilty king, overcome by remorse, thus soliloquises:--

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven!

_Hamlet_, coming upon his murderous uncle in his prayers, exclaims:--

Now might I do it, pat, while he is praying;
And now I'll do 't--and so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged?

The omission or retention of this scene might well be a matter of
dispute, for while it represents the guilty Claudius miserable and
contrite, even in the height of his success, it also portrays the
anticipated revenge of _Hamlet_ in so fearful a light, that he stands
there, not the human instrument of divine retribution, but with all the
diabolical cravings of Satan himself. I leave this question to abler
critics, and, in the meantime, our play is finished, amid shouts of
delight and calls before the curtain. It is but half-past nine, yet this
is a late hour for a German theatre, where they rarely perform more than
one piece, and that seldom exceeding two hours in duration. Descending
to the street, wrapped in the recollections of the gorgeous poem whose
beauties still echo in our ears, we are vulgar enough to relish hot
sausages and Bavarian beer.

An hour later we pace our half-lighted Johannis Strasse, seeking the
portal of our house amid the gloom. Suddenly we are startled by the
tramp of a heavy foot, and the clang and rattle of a steel weapon as it
strikes upon the ground. A burly voice assails us: "Whither are you
going?"

Is this Bernardo, wandered from the ramparts in search of the ghost of
Hamlet's father?

Not so: it is but one of the night-watch, armed with an enormous halbert
which might have done good service in the thirty y