A Midnight Fantasy

He was pondering what steps he could take to establish his identity, when he remembered the two or three letters which he had stuffed into his wallet on quitting Elsi-nore. He lighted a taper, and began examining the papers. Among them were the half dozen billet-doux which Ophelia had returned to him the night before his departure. They were, neatly tied together by a length of black ribbon, to which was attached a sprig of rosemary.

“That was just like Ophelia!” muttered the young man, tossing the package into the wallet again; “she was always having cheerful ideas like that.”

How long ago seemed the night she had handed him these love-letters, in her demure little way! How misty and remote seemed everything connected with the old life at Elsinore! His father’s death, his mother’s marriage, his anguish and isolation—they were like things that had befallen somebody else. There was something incredible, too, in his present situation. Was he dreaming? Was he really in Italy, and in love?

He hastily bent forward and picked up a square folded paper lying half concealed under the others.

“How could I have forgotten it!” he exclaimed.

It was a missive addressed, in Horatio’s angular hand, to the Signior Capulet of Verona, containing a few lines of introduction from Horatio, whose father had dealings with some of the rich Lombardy merchants and knew many of the leading families in the city. With this and several epistles, preserved by chance, written to him by Queen Gertrude while he was at the university, Hamlet saw that he would have no difficulty in proving to the Capulets that he was the Prince of Denmark.

At an unseemly hour the next morning Mercutio was roused from his slumbers by Hamlet, who counted every minute a hundred years until he saw Juliet. Mercutio did not take this interruption too patiently, for the honest humorist was very serious as a sleeper; but his equilibrium was quickly restored by Hamlet’s revelation.

The friends were long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of his visit, and was listened to with rapt attention by old Capulet, who inwardly blessed his stars that he had not given his daughter’s hand to the County Paris, as he was on the point of doing. The ladies were not visible on this occasion; the fatigues of the ball overnight, etc.; but that same evening Hamlet was accorded an interview with Juliet and Lady Capulet, and a few days subsequently all Verona was talking of nothing but the new engagement.

The destructive Tybalt scowled at first, and twirled his fierce mustache, and young Paris took to writing dejected poetry; but they both soon recovered their serenity, seeing that nobody minded them, and went together arm in arm to pay their respects to Hamlet.

A new life began now for Hamlet–he shed his inky cloak, and came out in a doublet of insolent splendor, looking like a dagger-handle newly gilt. With his funereal gear he appeared to have thrown off something of his sepulchral gloom. It was impossible to be gloomy with Juliet, in whom each day developed some sunny charm un-guessed before. Her freshness and coquettish candor were constant surprises. She had had many lovers, and she confessed them to Hamlet in the prettiest way. “Perhaps, my dear,” she said to him one evening, with an ineffable smile, “I might have liked young Romeo very well, but the family were so opposed to it from the very first. And then he was so—so demonstrative, don’t you know?”

Hamlet had known of Romeo’s futile passion, but he had not been aware until then that his betrothed was the heroine of the balcony adventure. On leaving Juliet he-went to look up the Montague; not for the purpose of crossing rapiers with him, as another man might have done, but to compliment him on his unexceptionable taste in admiring so rare a lady.

But Romeo had disappeared in a most unaccountable manner, and his family were in great tribulation concerning him. It was thought that perhaps the unrelenting Rosaline (who had been Juliet’s frigid predecessor) had relented, and Montague’s man Abram was dispatched to seek Romeo at her residence; but the Lady Rosaline, who was embroidering on her piazza, placidly denied all knowledge of him. It was then feared that he had fallen in one of the customary encounters; but there had been no fight, and nobody had been killed on either side for nearly twelve hours. Nevertheless, his exit had the appearance of being final. When Hamlet questioned Mercutio, the honest soldier laughed and stroked his blonde mustache.

“The boy has gone off in a heat, I don’t know where—to the icy ends of the earth, I believe, to cool himself.”

Hamlet regretted that Romeo should have had any feeling in the matter; but regret was a bitter weed that did not thrive well in the atmosphere in which the fortunate lover was moving. He saw Juliet every day, and there was not a fleck upon his happiness, unless it was the garrulous Nurse, against whom Hamlet had taken a singular prejudice. He considered her a tiresome old person, not too decent in her discourse at times, and advised Juliet to get rid of her; but the ancient serving-woman had been in the family for years, and it was not quite expedient to discharge her at that late day.

With the subtile penetration of old age the Nurse instantly detected Hamlet’s dislike, and returned it heartily.

“Ah, ladybird,” she cried one night, “ah, well-a-day! you know not how to choose a man. An I could choose for you, Jule! By God’s lady, there’s Signior Mercutio, a brave gentleman, a merry gentleman, and a virtuous, I warrant ye, whose little finger-joint is worth all the body of this blackbird prince, dropping down from Lord knows where to fly off with the sweetest bit of flesh in Verona. Marry, come up!”

But this was only a ripple on the stream that flowed so smoothly. Now and then, indeed, Hamlet felt called upon playfully to chide Juliet for her extravagance of language, as when, for instance, she prayed that when he died he might be cut out in little stars to deck the face of night. Hamlet objected, under any circumstances, to being cut out in little stars for any illuminating purposes whatsoever. Once she suggested to her lover that he should come to the garden after the family retired, and she would speak with him a moment from the balcony. Now, as there was no obstacle to their seeing each other whenever they pleased, and as Hamlet was of a nice sense of honor, and since his engagement a most exquisite practicer of propriety, he did not encourage Juliet in her thoughtlessness.

“What!” he cried, lifting his finger at her reprovingly, “romantic again!”

This was their nearest approach to a lovers’ quarrel. The next day Hamlet brought her, as peace-offering, a slender gold flask curiously wrought in niello, which he had had filled with a costly odor at an apothecary’s as he came along.

“I never saw so lean a thing as that same culler of simples,” said Hamlet, laughing; “a matter of ribs and shanks, a mere skeleton painted black. It is a rare essence, though. He told me its barbaric botanical name, but it escapes me.”

“That which we call a rose,” said Juliet, holding the perfumery to her nostrils and inclining herself prettily towards him, “would smell as sweet by any other name.”

O Youth and Love! O fortunate Time!

There was a banquet almost every night at the Capulets’, and the Montagues, up the street, kept their blinds drawn down, and Lady Montague, who had four marriageable, tawny daughters on her hands, was livid with envy at her neighbor’s success. She would rather have had two or three Montagues prodded through the body than that the prince should have gone to the rival house.

Happy Prince!

If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Laertes, and the rest of the dismal people at Elsinore, could have seen him now, they would not have known him. Where were his wan looks and biting speeches? His eyes were no longer filled with mournful speculation. He went in glad apparel, and took the sunshine as his natural inheritance. If he ever fell into moodiness—it was partly constitutional with him—the shadow fled away at the first approach of that “loveliest weight on lightest foot.” The sweet Veronese had nestled in his empty heart, and filled it with music. The ghosts and visions that used to haunt him were laid forever by Juliet’s magic.

Happy Juliet!

Her beauty had taken a new gloss. The bud bad grown into a flower, redeeming the promises of the bud. If her heart beat less wildly, it throbbed more strongly. If she had given Hamlet of her superabundance of spirits, he had given her of his wisdom and discretion. She had always been a great favorite in society; but Verona thought her ravishing now. The mantua-makers cut their dresses by her patterns, and when she wore turquoise, garnets went ont of style. Instead of the groans and tears, and all those distressing events which might possibly have happened if Juliet had persisted in loving Romeo—listen to her laugh and behold her merry eyes!

Every morning either Peter or Gregory might have been seen going up Hamlet’s staircase with a note from Juliet—she had ceased to send the Nurse on discovering her lover’s antipathy to that person—and some minutes later either Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines into very choice Italian:—

     “Doubt thou the stars are fire,          Doubt that the sun doth move;     Doubt Truth to be a liar,          But never doubt I love.”

To be sure, he had originally composed this quatrain for Ophelia; but what would you have? He had scarcely meant it then; he meant it now; besides, a felicitous rhyme never goes out of fashion. It always fits.

While transcribing the verse his thoughts naturally reverted to Ophelia, for the little poesy was full of a faint scent of the past, like a pressed flower. His conscience did not prick him at all. How fortunate for him and for her that matters had gone no further between them? Predisposed to melancholy, and inheriting a not very strong mind from her father, Ophelia was a lady who needed cheering up, if ever poor lady did. He, Hamlet, was the last man on the globe with whom she should have had any tender affiliation. If they had wed, they would have caught each other’s despondency, and died, like a pair of sick ravens, within a fortnight. What had become of her? Had she gone into a nunnery? He would make her abbess, if he ever returned to Elsinore.

After a month or two of courtship, there being no earthly reason to prolong it, Hamlet and Juliet were privately married in the Franciscan Chapel, Friar Laurence officiating; but there was a grand banquet that night at the Capulets’, to which all Verona went. At Hamlet’s intercession, the Montagues were courteously asked to this festival. To the amazement of every one the Montagues accepted the invitation and came, and were treated royally, and the long, lamentable feud—it would have sorely puzzled either house to explain what it was all about—was at an end. The adherents of the Capulets and the Montagues were forbidden on the spot to bite any more thumbs at each other.

“It will detract from the general gayety of the town,” Mercutio remarked. “Signior Tybalt, my friend, I shall never have the pleasure of running you through the diaphragm; a cup of wine with you!”

The guests were still at supper in the great pavilion erected in the garden, which was as light as day with the glare of innumerable flambeaux set among the shrubbery. Hamlet and Juliet, with several others, had withdrawn from the tables, and were standing in the doorway of the pavilion, when Hamlet’s glance fell upon the familiar form of a young man who stood with one foot on the lower step, holding his plumed bonnet in his hand. His hose and doublet were travel-worn, but his honest face was as fresh as daybreak.

“What! Horatio?”

“The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.”

“Sir, my good friend: I ‘ll change that name with you. What brings you to Verona?”

“I fetch you news, my lord.”

“Good news? Then the king is dead.”

“The king lives, but Ophelia is no more.”

“Ophelia dead!”

“Not so, my lord; she ‘s married.”

“I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student.”

“As I do live, my honored lord, ‘t is true.”

“Married, say you?”

“Married to him that sent me hither—a gentleman of winning ways and a most choice conceit, the scion of a noble house here in Verona—one Romeo.”

The oddest little expression flitted over Juliet’s face. There was never woman yet, even on her bridal day, could forgive a jilted lover marrying.

“Ophelia wed!” murmured the bridegroom.

“Do you know the lady, dear?”

“Excellent well,” replied Hamlet, turning to Juliet; “a most estimable young person, the daughter of my father’s chamberlain. She is rather given to singing ballads of an elegiac nature,” added the prince, reflectingly, “but our madcap Romeo will cure her of that. Methinks I see them now”—

“Oh, where, my lord?”

“In my mind’s eye, Horatio, surrounded by their little ones—noble youths and graceful maidens, in whom the impetuosity of the fiery Romeo is tempered by the pensiveness of the fair Ophelia. I shall take it most unkindly of them, love,” toying with Juliet’s fingers, “if they do not name their first boy Hamlet.”

It was just as my lord Hamlet finished speaking that the last horse-car for Boston—providentially belated between Water-town and Mount Auburn—swept round the curve of the track on which I was walking. The amber glow of the car-lantern lighted up my figure in the gloom, the driver gave a quick turn on the brake, and the conductor, making a sudden dexterous clutch at the strap over his head, sounded the death-knell of my fantasy as I stepped upon the rear platform.