“I wish I had had a Boswell all the same,” said Shakespeare.  “Then the world would have known the truth about me.”

“It wouldn’t if he’d relied on your word for it,” retorted the Doctor.  “Hullo! here’s Hamlet.”

As the Doctor spoke, in very truth the melancholy Dane appeared in the doorway, more melancholy of aspect than ever.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Cicero, addressing the new-comer.  “Haven’t you got that poison out of your system yet?”

“Not entirely,” said Hamlet, with a sigh; “but it isn’t that that’s bothering me.  It’s Fate.”

“We’ll get out an injunction against Fate if you like,” said Blackstone.  “Is it persecution, or have you deserved it?”

“I think it’s persecution,” said Hamlet.  “I never wronged Fate in my life, and why she should pursue me like a demon through all eternity is a thing I can’t understand.”

“Maybe Ophelia is back of it,” suggested Doctor Johnson.  “These women have a great deal of sympathy for each other, and, candidly, I think you behaved pretty rudely to Ophelia.  It’s a poor way to show your love for a young woman, running a sword through her father every night for pay, and driving the girl to suicide with equal frequency, just to show theatre-goers what a smart little Dane you can be if you try.”

“’Tisn’t me does all that,” returned Hamlet.  “I only did it once, and even then it wasn’t as bad as Shakespeare made it out to be.”

“I put it down just as it was,” said Shakespeare, hotly, “and you can’t dispute it.”

“Yes, he can,” said Yorick.  “You made him tell Horatio he knew me well, and he never met me in his life.”

“I never told Horatio anything of the sort,” said Hamlet.  “I never entered the graveyard even, and I can prove an alibi.”

“And, what’s more, he couldn’t have made the remark the way Shakespeare has it, anyhow,” said Yorick, “and for a very good reason.  I wasn’t buried in that graveyard, and Hamlet and I can prove an alibi for the skull, too.”

“It was a good play, just the same,” said Cicero.

“Very,” put in Doctor Johnson.  “It cured me of insomnia.”

“Well, if you don’t talk in your sleep, the play did a Christian service to the world,” retorted Shakespeare.  “But, really, Hamlet, I thought I did the square thing by you in that play.  I meant to, anyhow; and if it has made you unhappy, I’m honestly sorry.”

“Spoken like a man,” said Yorick.

“I don’t mind the play so much,” said Hamlet, “but the way I’m represented by these fellows who play it is the thing that rubs me the wrong way.  Why, I even hear that there’s a troupe out in the western part of the United States that puts the thing on with three Hamlets, two ghosts, and a pair of blood-hounds.  It’s called the Uncle-Tom-Hamlet Combination, and instead of my falling in love with one crazy Ophelia, I am made to woo three dusky maniacs named Topsy on a canvas ice-floe, while the blood-hounds bark behind the scenes.  What sort of treatment is that for a man of royal lineage?”