CHAPTER XVII.

"How now! a rat, dead for a ducat."

Then Hamlet holds his mother to the talk and pours these lines of liquid gall into her trembling ear and frightened heart:

"Look here, upon this picture, and on this,The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.See what a grace was seated on this brow;Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;A station like the herald MercuryNew-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;A combination and a form indeed,Where every god did seem to set his sealTo give the world assurance of a man;This was your husband. Look you now,What follows:Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear,Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,And batten on this foul moor?Your husband; a murderer and a villain;A slave that is not twentieth part the titheOf your precedent lord; a vice of kings;A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,That from a shelf the precious diadem stoleAnd put it in his pocket!A king of shreds and patches!"

King Claudius, alarmed at the death of Polonius and his own guilty state, conspires with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet to England and get rid of him, saying:

"Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed abroad,Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night;Away! for everything is sealed and doneThat else leans on the affair; pray you, make haste!"

Hamlet before retiring thus bemoans his slowness in wreaking a just vengeance upon his murderer uncle:

"How all occasions do inform against me,And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,If his chief good and market of his timeBe but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.Sure, he that made us with such large discourseLooking before and after, gave us notThat capability and god-like reasonTo rot in us unused.Rightly to be greatIs not to stir without great argument;But greatly to find quarrel in a strawWhen honor's at the stake. How stand I then,That have a father killed, a mother stained,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men,That for a fantasy and trick of fameGo to their graves like beds, fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,Which is not tomb enough and continentTo hide the slain? O, from this time forth,My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!"

The beautiful Ophelia becomes insane after her father's death, and wanders about the castle singing disjointed love songs and uttering musings.

QueenGertrudesays:

"How now, Ophelia?"

She sings:

"How should I your true love knowFrom another one?By his cockle hat and staffAnd his sandal shoon."

The king asks:

"How do you do, pretty lady?"

She replies:

"They say the owl was a banker's daughter;Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."

Laertes returns from France and finds his sister insane from grief over the loss of her father, and viewing this innocent wreck parading palace halls, exclaims:

"Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!O heavens! is it possible a young maid's witsShould be as mortal as an old man's life?"

Ophelia unconsciously sings:

"They bore him barefaced on the bier;Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny;And in his grave rained many a tear—Fare you well, my dove!"

Holding a spray of flowers in her hands she fitfully plucks them and murmurs:

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;Pray you, love, remember;And there is pansies, that's for thoughts;There's fennel for you, and columbines;There's rue for you, and here's some for me;We may call it herb of grace on Sunday;O, you must wear your rue with a difference.There's a daisy; I would give you some violets—But they withered all when my father died!"

Hamlet and his party in sailing for England encounter a war-like pirate ship, and in the fight and grapple Hamlet alone is taken prisoner and his keepers go to destruction.

He suddenly appears at Elsinore, and goes tothe churchyard, where a grave is being prepared for Ophelia, who was drowned in a garden stream in her mad ramblings.

Hamlet converses philosophically with the grave diggers about the bones, skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a sleep of twenty-three years, Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:

"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio;A fellow of infinite jest, of mostExcellent fancy, he hath borne meOn his back a thousand times, and nowHow abhorred in my imaginationIt is! my gorge rises at it. Here hungThose lips that I have kissed, I know notHow oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols?Your songs? Your flashes of merriment,That were wont to set the table in a roar?Not one now, to mock your own grinning!Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber,And tell her, let her paint an inch thick,To this favor she must come;Make her laugh at that!"

The funeral procession with the corpse of Ophelia now appears, Laertes, King, Queen, train, and priests attending.

The priests tell Laertes that were it not for "great command" his sister's body "should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet," because of alleged suicide.

Laertes peremptorily says:

"Lay her in the earthAnd from her fair and unpolluted fleshMay violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,A ministering angel shall my sister beWhen thou liest howling in perdition."

Laertes and Hamlet, both overpowered with frantic grief, leap into the new-made grave and struggle for precedence of affection, the former exclaiming:

"Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,Till of this flat a mountain you have madeTo o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish headOf blue Olympus!"

Hamlet, replying to the King, Queen and Laertes, says:

"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers,Could not, with all their quantity of loveMake up my sum:And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throwMillions of acres on us, till our groundSingeing his pate against the burning zoneMake Ossa like a wart!"

Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio, how on his voyage to England he discovered that King Claudius gave commission to his enemies to send his head to the block. Hamlet says:

"Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach usThere's a Divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will."

King Claudius seeing no other way to get rid of Hamlet, consults his secret courtiers and brews up the passion existing between Laertes and himself, proposing that they fence with rapiers for a great prize, the King betting that in twelve passes of swords Laertes makes not three hits on Hamlet.

The grand contest for excellence in sword-play comes off in the main hall of the palace, while the King, Queen, lords and courtiers await the entrance of Hamlet.

The rapier point handed by the King to Laertes, was dipped in deadly poison, so that it but touch the flesh of Hamlet certain death prevailed, and even of the wine cups set on the table to quench the thirst of the artistic fencers, one was poisoned and intended for Hamlet's dissolution.

Laertes was in the poison plot, and Hamlet felt in his soul that foul play was intended, but in the general scramble and conclusion he hoped to wipe off the score of his vengeance from the slate of royal iniquity and slaughter.

Trumpet and cannon sound for beginning the sword contest.

First passes favored Hamlet, and the King, grasping the poison wine cup, says:

"Hamlet, this pearl is thine;Here's to thy health!"(Offering him the cup.)

Hamlet replies:

"Give Laertes the cup,I'll play this bout first; set it by a while."

Hamlet makes another pass and touches Laertes, and the Queen grasps the poison cup in her excitement and drinks to her son.

The King impulsively says:

"Gertrude, do not drink!"(Aside)"It is thepoisoned cup!"

The Queen, as God and Fate would have it, says stubbornly:

"I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me!"

In the third round Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned-pointed rapier, and in the struggle Hamlet grasps Laertes' rapier and in turn wounds his antagonist.

At this moment the Queen falls off her throne, and dying, says to Hamlet:

"O, my dear Hamlet; the drink, the drink; Iam poisoned!"

Laertes then falls, and Hamlet, seeing through the plot, exclaims:

"O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked;Treachery! seek it out!"

Laertes makes the dying confession of his treachery:

"It is here, Hamlet; Hamlet, thou art slain;No medicine in the world can do thee good,In thee there is not half an hour of life;The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,Unbated and envenomed; the foul practiceHath turned itself on me, lo, here I lie,Never to rise again; thy mother's poisoned;I can no more; the King, the King is to blame!"

Then Hamlet, as a lion rushing on his prey, exclaims:

"The point envenomed too,Then, venom, to thy work."(Stabs the King.)

The King falls and says: "I am but hurt"; while Hamlet grasps the poisoned cup of wine and dashes it down the throat of the guilty monster, exclaiming:

"Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,Drink off this potion: is thy union here?—Follow my mother!"(King dies.)

Laertes' last words:

"The King is justly served;Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet."

Hamlet replies:

"Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!You that look pale and tremble at this chance,That are but mutes or audience to this act,Had I but time,—as this fell sergeant—Death,Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you—But let it be. Horatio, I am dead!Thou livest; report me and my cause arightTo the unsatisfied.O, I die, Horatio;The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit,I cannot live to hear the news from England;But I do prophesy the election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,Which have solicited. The rest is silence!"(Dies.)

And then to close the scene of slaughter, the noble and faithful Horatio, bending over the body of his princely friend, exclaims:

"Now cracks a noble heart; Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Such tumultuous applause I never heard in a theatre, and shouts for "The Ghost" and "Hamlet" prevailed until William and Burbage came from behind the curtain and made a triple bow to the audience as the clock in the tower of Saint Paul struck the midnight hour.

The lesson in great Hamlet taught,Is that a throne is dearly boughtBy lawless love and bloody deeds,Which fester like corruptedweeds,And smell to heaven with poison breathInvolving all in certain death.For fraud and murder can't be hidSince Eve and Cain did what they didAnd left us naked through the world,Like meteors in midnight hurled,To darkle in this trackless sphere,Not knowing what we're doing here!

"All that lives must die,Passing through nature to eternity.""Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.""What have kings that privates have not too,Save ceremony?"

"All that lives must die,Passing through nature to eternity."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

"What have kings that privates have not too,Save ceremony?"

The New Year of sixteen hundred and three brought no consolation or happiness to Queen Elizabeth. Her reign of forty-four years had been bloody, but patriotic; and while she had long since passed the noonday of her glory, her sunset of life hastened to its setting with a fevered brain and tortured heart, to think that she had not one real friend living, but surrounded by cunning courtiers, who were already manipulating for the favor and patronage of King James.

Like a blasted pine on a mountain peak,She moaned and sighed every day and week;Awaiting the deadly, stormy gustThat laid her low in the crumbling dust.

To amuse her lingering hours of grief Lord Cecil desired the Shakspere Company to give its new version of "Love's Labor's Lost" before the Queen in the grand reception hall at Richmond.

Burbage went to the castle and made all the preliminary preparations for the play, and on the night of the second of February, 1603, the fantastic love play was given for the amusement of the Virgin Queen. She sat in regal solitude, and with mock laughter tried to enjoy the mimic show.

The royal audience was great in rank, beauty, wealth and intellect, yet through the various scenes of the light-hearted drama, Elizabeth only swung her head, muttered and sighed, while her courtiers evinced great amusement at the predicament of the various lovers in the play. Nothing can minister to a mind diseased.

The Queen professed great disappointment at the absence of Shakspere from the performance—"on account of sickness," as Burbage told her Royal Highness. But William and myself remained at our rooms at Temple Bar that evening working on the first draughts of "Macbeth" to catch the praise and patronage of King James, the Scotch-Englishman.

Since the execution of Essex and imprisonment of Southampton Shakspere never said a word in praise of Elizabeth, and when he heard of her death on the 26th of March, 1603, he betrayed no feeling of grief, but on the contrary, expressed delight that the way was now clear for the release of Southampton and other victims of Elizabeth from the Tower.

Several weeks before her death Elizabeth wasafflicted with a choking sensation, and the ghosts of her murdered sister—Mary, Queen of Scots, and her former lover, the beheaded Earl of Essex, appeared nightly.

Cecil asked her a few days before she died how she felt, when she muttered, "My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck."

Thus a cruel, bloody conscience sat like a fiend over her dying sighs and groans, and though surrounded with the wealth and glory of the world, the Virgin Queen stepped into eternity with only the memory of a successful tyrant to light her to the Pluto realms of her father, King Henry the Eighth!

Her funeral procession and burial in Westminster Abbey was the grandest exhibition of royal pomp and magnificence. The whole population seemed to fill all the alleys, streets and parks of the great city, with the army and navy leading the funeral cortege, while the great bells from steeple, tower and temple rang out their periodical wail of sonorous sounds for twenty-four hours.

The body of Elizabeth had been scarcely cold in death when Lord Cecil and the Royal Council proclaimed James of Scotland, King of England, Ireland, Scotland and France, tumbling over each other in a mad race to throw themselves prostrate before the rising sun, forgetting in a day the honors and benefactions showered upon them for forty years by their late mistress.

And thus we see from age to age,The greed of man on every page;No matter whether young or old,His strife in life is search for gold!

King James left Edinburgh on the 5th of April with a royal escort for London, and by easy stage from town to town and castle to castle, made a triumphal march to London, where he arrived on the 7th of May, 1603, putting up at the Whitehall Palace. The lords of the realm and millions of faithful subjects gave James their loyal adhesion and support, lauding him to the skies as monarch of the realm and defender of the Faith. Hope had no thorns in her crown.

Protestants and Catholics alike, on their first rush of spontaneous patriotism, made a bid for the patronage of the new king, who, although reared a Protestant, was known to have sympathy for certain Catholic lords, who tried to save his mother—Mary, Queen of Scots, from the fatal block. James never forgave Elizabeth for the murder of his mother, and in his inmost heart despised his predecessor.

King James after his coronation and triumphal entry into London on the 15th of March, 1604, ordered a partial jail delivery, releasing hundreds of prisoners in Scotland, Ireland and England, exempting only highway and house robbers, murderers, and those who had committed overt acts of treason against the crown.

Many political prisoners had been immured in the Tower and other state prisons on trivial or trumped up charges, preferred by jealous courtiers on personal or religious grounds.

James was very friendly to the dramatic profession, and granted a charter to the Shakspere Company to play at the Blackfriars, Globe, Prince, Fortune and Curtain theatres.

In the coronation procession nine of the "Kings Company" appeared dressed out in fantastic array, wearing four yards and a half each of silk-scarlet cloth.

The nine chief actors thus honored by the King were William Shakspere, Augustine Phillips, Laurence Fletcher, John Hemmings, William Sley, RobertArmin, Henry Condell, Richard Cowley and Richard Burbage.

King James sent for Shakspere and Burbage and told them to be ever in readiness as the King's servants to perform at any of the palaces that he might entertain domestic or foreign guests, and assured them that the puritanical policy that had hounded them in the past should not prevail during his reign, believing that the stage, properly managed, was as great an educator for the people as the church.

When William told me of this interview with the King I expressed great delight, with the other literary bohemians that now there sat on the throne of old Albion, a patron of poetry, painting, music and sculpture.

The Church of Rome and the Church of England had been battling for nearly a hundred years in Britain for the mastery; and although the devotees of Luther's Reformation had cracked the creed of popes and princes, there was a general demand for a new version and translation of the Bible, cutting out the Catholicism of the old book and expurgating the vulgarity and superstition engrafted on the "Word of God" by the apostles and bishops of the first, second and third centuries, after Christ had been crucified for the sins of all mankind.

Curious kind of celestial justice, to kill any man for my sins and crimes? I prefer to suffer for my own sins and not fall back on a "scapegoat" to carry them off into the wilderness.

On the first of September, 1604, a great religious conclave was held at Hampton Court by the established church and the Puritans, and there it was determined to make a new, revised and complete edition of the Bible, by the royal authority of King James.

On the first of May, 1607, forty-seven of the most learned men of the British realm assembled in three parties at Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster to make a new Bible for the guidance of mankind. Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholars made up the great conclave; and after four years of detailed labor the King James edition of the Bible was published to the world, cutting loose forever from the power of Rome.

Although the "Word of God" has been revised several times since by man there are yet a large number of sentences and verses in the Old and New Testament that might be expurgated in the interest of decency, reason and science.

This electric age is too rapid and wise to gulp down the obsolete doctrine of ancient fanaticism, and the preachers of to-day are painfully alarmed at the decreasing number of pewholders and patrons, who once listened to their rigmarole platitudes or eloquent dissertations on the power and locution of an unknown God.

On Christmas Eve, 1607, the "King's Players," with Shakspere and Burbage in the respective rôles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, produced that greathistorical play at the grand reception room of Whitehall, in the presence of King James and the nobles of his court, surrounded by the ministers and diplomats from all the civilized nations of the world.

I never saw a grander audience, interspersed with the most beautiful ladies of the world, who shone in their jewels and diamonds like a field of variegated wild flowers, besprinkled with the morning dew.

The witches in the play seemed to startle the King, and more than ever convince him that these inhabitants of earth and air were all of a reality, and should be destroyed wherever found, believing that they held the destiny of man in the caldron of their incantations.

"Come, come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;And fill me from the crown to the toe, top fullOf direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,Stop up the access and passage to remorse;That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenThe effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,Wherever in your sightless substancesYou wait on nature's mischief; come, thick night,And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark!"

This speech of the devilish Lady Macbeth madea deep impression on the audience, and caused the King to squirm in his throne chair at the contemplation of the murder of Duncan, but when William entered as Macbeth and rendered the following speech James wished himself a million miles away, and yet applauded to the echo the murdering thoughts of the Scottish chieftain:

"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere wellIt were done quickly. If the assassinationCould trammel up the consequence, and catch,With his surcease, success; that but this blowMight be the be-all and the end-all here,But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,—We'd jump the life to come; but, in these casesWe still have judgment here; that we but teachBloody instructions, which being taught, returnTo plague the inventor. This evenhanded justiceCommends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice,To our own lips. He's here in double trust;First as I am his kinsman and his subject,Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,Who should against his murderer shut the door,Not bear the knife himself. Besides, this DuncanHath born his faculties so meek, hath beenSo clear in his great office, that his virtuesWill plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, againstThe deep damnation of his taking off;And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsedUpon the sightless coursers of the air,Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,That tears shall drown the wind; I have no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,And falls on the other!"

Still brooding on the murder of Duncan, Macbeth says:

"Is this a dagger which I see before me,The handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee;I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,Art thou not, fatal vision, sensibleTo feeling as to sight? Or art thou butA dagger of the mind; a false creation,Proceeding from the heat oppressed brain?I see thee yet in form as palpableAs this which now I draw.Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;And such an instrument I was to use.Mine eyes are made the fools of the other senses,Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still;And on thy blade and handle, gouts of blood,Which was not so before, there's no such thing;It is the bloody business, which informsThus to mine eyes, now o'er the one-half worldNature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuseThe curtained sleeper; now witchcraft celebratesPale Hecate's offerings, and withered murderAlarmed by his sentinel, the wolf,Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy paceWith Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his designMoves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earthHear not my steps, which way they walk, for fearThe very stones prate of my whereabout,And take the present horror from the time,Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives,Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives;I go and it is done; the bell invites me.Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knellThat summons thee to heaven or to hell!"

After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is constantly haunted with the ghost of her victim, and in midnight hours, sick at soul, walks in her sleep, talking of her bloody deed:

"Out damned spot! out I say!Here's the smell of the blood still;All the perfumes of ArabiaWill not sweeten this little hand!"

And then retiring to her purple couch, amidst the cries of her waiting woman, she dies with insane groans echoing through her castle halls.

Macbeth, the pliant, cowardly, ambitious tool of his wicked wife, is at last surrounded by Macduff and his soldiers, and informed that his lady is dead.

And then soliloquizing on time and life, he utters these philosophic phrases:

"She should have died hereafter;There would have been a time for such a word;To-morrow; and to-morrow, and to-morrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a tale,Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury—Signifying nothing!"

And then, in the forest in front of the castle Macbeth is at last brought to bay and killed by Macduff; but the murderer of Duncan, brave to the last, exclaims:

"Yet I will try the last; before my bodyI throw my warlike shield; lay on Macduff,And damned be him that first cries, Hold, enough!"

A whirlwind of applause echoed through the royal halls at the conclusion of the great Scotch historical drama, and Shakspere was loudly called before the footlights, making a general bow to the audience, and paying deep, low courtesy to the King, who beckoned him to the throne chair, and placed about his neck a heavy golden chain with a miniature of His Majesty attached. William was glorified.

"Murder, though it have no tongue, will speakWith most miraculous organ!"

"He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause."

"The king-becoming gracesAre justice, verity, temperance, stableness,Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude."

Shakspere became a prime favorite of King James, and occasionally he entertained the Bard at Whitehall Palace, introducing him to the bishops, cardinals and lords, who were interested in the revision of the Bible. They were astonished at the detailed knowledge of Shakspere, touching the "Word of God;" and when he entered into a dissertation of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin philosophers and "divines" who concocted the history of the ancients, they marveled at his native erudition.

These modern preachers had been educated and empurpled in the classical ruts of ancient superstitious divinity, while William communed with immediate nature, and taught lessons of virtue and vice on the dramatic stage that impresses the rushing world, far more than dictatorial dogmas or pulpit platitudes.

Shakspere was a constant searcher of all religious bibles, and particularly pondered on the Christian story of the creation, prophecies, crucifixion and revelation. Paganism was the advanced guard of Christianity!

Monks, priests, preachers, bishops, cardinals, popes, princes, kings, emperors and czars had exercised their minds and hands as commentators on the old philosophy of an unknown God; and William saw no reason why he should not extract from or paraphrase the best logical phrases and sentences of the Bible.

His sonnets and plays are filled with the hidden meaning of the scriptures, and those who read closely and delve deeply into the works of the Bard of Avon will need no better moral teacher. His axioms and epigrams are used to-day as the proverbial philosophy of practical life, and the whole world is indebted to the sons of a carpenter and a butcher for the greatest pleasure and philosophy that has ever been enunciated on the globe!

The years 1611, 1612 and 1613 found William at the pinnacle of his dramatic glory, and like a ripe philosopher he finished his most thoughtful plays, "Timon of Athens," "A Winter's Tale," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Pericles," "Cymbeline," "Henry the Eighth," and his cap sheaf in the grain field of thought, "The Tempest."

The constant intellectual labor of Shakspere began to tell on his body, but his mind like a slumbering volcano, emitted flashes of heat and light, irradiating the midnight of literary mediocrity and gilding his declining days with golden flashes of fame and fortune.

He sold his interest in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, and purchased property in London and Stratford, making every preparation as a wise and thrifty man for himself and his children and family. William ever kept an eye on the glint and glory of gold, and while his bohemian theatrical companions were squandering their shillings at midnight taverns with "belles and beaux" he "put money in his purse," and kept it there.

Gold is power everywhere;Best of friends in toil and care;And it surely will outwearRoyal purple here or there!

King James, in searching for an alliance to strengthen his throne by a marriage with his beautiful and brainy daughter, Elizabeth, finally hit upon the Elector Frederick, Count Palatine of Germany, and in the spring of 1613 all the loyal nobility of England were delighted that a matrimonial alliance had been made with a Protestant prince.

While King James lent his official power to the Protestant religion and aided the Reformation in its rapid encroachments upon the papal power of Rome, he socially and clandestinely gave ear to the priests, bishops and cardinals of the Catholic church.

The ceremonials incident to the marriage of Frederick and Elizabeth were splendid in the songs, dances, masques, parades, fireworks, and dramatic entertainments at Whitehall.

Facsimile page 248

A dozen of the most appropriate plays of Shaksperewere enacted before the nobility of the realm; and the diplomatic corps from foreign lands were greatly charmed by the magnificence of the theatrical displays.

The King spent one hundred thousand dollars in the palace and London festivities of the marriage of his beautiful daughter, and he secretly pawned his word and jewels to secure the ready cash.

As an intellectual climax to the splendid, royal nuptials, King James invited to the wedding banquet three thousand of the most noted men and women of the world and informed his guests that at the conclusion of the feast the most wonderful dramatic artist of the age—William Shakspere, would recite in monologue from his own plays rare bits of philosophic eloquence.

The benevolent reader will be glad to know and see that I have carefully preserved the following autographic note of His Majesty King James, inviting William to the wedding banquet:

"Whitehall, Feb. 14th, 1613."ToWilliam Shakspere,"Our Royal Dramatic Poet."Great Sir: You will appear this evening at seven o'clock, at Whitehall, to entertain by monologue, at nuptial banquet, three thousand guests."James, Rex."

"Whitehall, Feb. 14th, 1613.

"ToWilliam Shakspere,"Our Royal Dramatic Poet.

"Great Sir: You will appear this evening at seven o'clock, at Whitehall, to entertain by monologue, at nuptial banquet, three thousand guests.

"James, Rex."

The Archbishop of Canterbury tied the nuptial knot. The bride and groom, arrayed in white satin and German purple, respectively, looked magnificent as they knelt at the palace altar to receive the final blessing of the Episcopal Church amid the glorious greetings of wealth and power.

Fourteen salutes from the royal artillery in honor of Frederick and Elizabeth and St. Valentine's Day, echoed from the heights of Whitehall, and carrier pigeons with love notes were sent flying over the temples, churches and towers of London to notify all loyal subjects that the throne of old Albion had been strengthened by an infusion of Germanic blood.

Promptly at seven o'clock St. Valentine's evening, Richard Burbage, Ben Jonson, Shakspere and myself drove up in our festooned carriage to the palace portals of Whitehall, and were ushered into the presence of the great assembly doing honor to the royal bride and groom, Frederick and Elizabeth.

The King sat on a throne chair at the head of the banquet board, with his daughter and son-in-law on his left, while the Queen sat on his right.

The other royal guests were seated according to their ancestral rank, while our dramatic quartette occupied a special table, William at the head on the right of the King and Queen, elevated as an improvised stage, with Shakspere, the most intellectual man of the world, "the observed of all observers!"

The play of knife and fork, laugh and jest, toast and talk lasted for two hours, and then as the foam on the brim of the beakers began to sparkle, the King, in his royal robes arose, and said:

"My loyal subjects, health and prosperity to Great Britain and Germany, and love and truth for Frederick and Elizabeth."

The three thousand guests standing responded with a storm of cheers, and then the King remarked:

"We are honored to-night by the presence of William Shakspere, our most loyal and intellectual subject, who will now address you in logic and philosophy from his own matchless plays."

(Lord Bacon looked as if he wanted to crawl under the table at the King's compliment to the Bard of Avon.)

Shakspere arose, dressed in a dark purple suit, knee breeches and short sword by his side, bowed majestically, and for two hours entranced the royal assembly with these eloquent pen pictures of humanity:

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