Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/63

5, 1862.] suspected by him (who seems, by the way, to have been a monster of brutality and sensuality), of an intrigue with Struensee, his prime minister; but her banishment and the subsequent downfall of that minister were the results of a plot hatched by the other party. When she was imprisoned there, it is said that the captain of an English merchantman, then in the Sound, whose name unfortunately has not been preserved, hearing of her unhappy condition, and anxious to alleviate it, sent her by the medium of the English consul at Elsinore, a leg of mutton and potatoes: which she graciously accepted, sending him in return a gold chain. This Princess was subsequently removed to Aalberg, and after an imprisonment of three years there, died at Zell in Hanover.

In the course of our trip we had become used to seeing the namesnames of the [sic] dramatis personæ in Shakspeare’s play constantly recur; but I don’t think we were prepared to dine on or near Hamlet’s grave; but Marienlust, a small hotel, or boarding-house, with its garden, occupies the traditional spot. As all the Danish kings were and are still buried at Roeskilda, it does not appear how Hamlet’s grave comes to be here. As all our readers have not read “Dunham’s Scandinavia, or Saxo-Grammaticus,” we will give the original story as told there.

Fengo and Horwendil were joint sovereigns of Jutland. Hamlet was the son of the latter: Fengo murdered Horwendil, married his widow Gertrude, and became sole ruler. Thus, the main incidents