[TO BE CONCLUDED.]

* * * * *

CHANGED.

  I can not tell what change has come to you,
    Since when, amid the pine-trees’ murmurous stir,
  You spoke to me of love most deep and true: 
    I only know you are not as you were.

  It is not that you fail in tender speech;
    You speak to me as kindly as of old;
  But yet there is a depth I do not reach,
    A doubt that makes my heart grow sick and cold.

  True, there has been no anger and no strife;
    I only feel, with dreary discontent,
  That something bright has vanished from my life;
    I know not what it is, nor where it went.

  You chide my grief, and wipe my frequent tears;
    But to my pain what art can minister? 
  Oh!  I would give all life’s remaining years
    If you would be again as once you were!

  As, dipped in fabled fountains far away,
    All living things are hardened into stone,
  So strange and frozen seems your love to-day,
    Its sweet, spontaneous growth and life are gone: 

  And it is changed into a marble ghost,
    Driving away all happiness and rest;
  In whose chill arms I shiver faint and lost,
    Bruising my heart against its rocky breast.

  Nay, no regrets, no vows:  it is too late,
    Too late for you to speak, or me to hear: 
  We can not mend torn roses:  we must wait
    For the new blossoms of another year.

* * * * *

HAMLET A FAT MAN.

I have seen on the stage several Hamlets, more or less successful in that sublime dramatic creation of Shakspeare, to say nothing of small-calfed personifications at private fancy balls.  Young Booth, in these days, is doubtless the most ideal and accurate interpreter of the great Dane; although Mrs. Kemble’s rendition is certainly beyond the reach of hostile criticism.

In this paper I propose to consider Hamlet not as he is represented on the stage, but as he is described in the original text.  At the theatre, he usually appears as a dark-complexioned, black-haired, beetle-browed, and slender young man, wearing an intensely gloomy wig, eyebrows corked into the blackness of preternatural bitterness, while on thin and romantic legs, imprisoned in black silk tights, he struts across the stage, the counterfeit presentment of the veritable prince.

I once read a brief line or two in a work by Goethe, alleging that Hamlet was ‘a fat man.’  At first I was inclined to regard this as a joke of the majestic German.  Later reflection induced me to examine this surmise in detail, and to conclude finally that the theory is true, and that the enigma of Hamlet’s character can be solved through calculations of pinguitude.

Eureka.  Perfect tense, indicative mood, ‘I have found it!’ In fact, the whole Hamlet problem must be regarded in an obese, or adipose point of view.  The Prince of Denmark is not the conventional Hamlet of the theatre, nor the Hamlet of Shakspeare.  He was a Northman, and like the greater number of the inhabitants of Northern Europe, was, doubtless, a blue-eyed and flaxen-haired blonde.  My lord was far from appearing thin or delicate; on the contrary, he carried on his belly a large portmanteau well-rounded by the swell of the digesting nutriment.