Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/64

56 in the story of the play are historical facts. Hamlet eager to revenge his father’s murder feigned madness, and for this cause put on a strange garb, and did the most ridiculous things.

He was frequently seen on the hearth among the ashes, making wooden hooks which he hardened by the heat. On being asked for what he intended them, he said:

“For the revenge of my father!”

Fengo suspecting him of feigning madness for some design, set spies to watch him, and for this purpose had him brought to the Queen’s apartment, where a spy lay concealed under some straw. But Hamlet, on entering the room, imitated the crowing of a cock, and waving his arms like wings, leapt on the straw, and feeling something beneath it, despatched him with his sword: after which, while his mother is bewailing his insanity, he upbraids her with her crimes as in the play. The body of the slain man he had cut in pieces, and thrown into a sewer; and on being asked on Fengo’s coming, what had become of him, replied:

“He fell into the sewer, and being unable to extricate himself, was eaten by the swine.”

After this, Fengo devised his plan of sending him to England, which country, at that period, was, we are told, a fief of Denmark. Hamlet, before starting, desired his mother in one year from that time to celebrate his obsequies: assuring her that in one year he would return. He was accompanied by two creatures of Fengo, and from them he discovered, while asleep, the mandate to the English king to murder him, which was carved on wood. This he so ingeniously altered that the two companions were put to death, while he himself was received with the greatest hospitality, and was so much admired that he received in marriage the hand of the King’s daughter. He pretended to be grieved at the death of his two companions, and to pacify him the King gave him a quantity of gold which he melted and inclosed in two walking sticks, with which he returned at the end of the year to Jutland. Here in a motley garb he reached the house of his uncle, where his funeral rites were being held. After the astonishment at his appearance had subsided, he was asked:

“Where are your two companions?”

“Here they are,” he replied; showing his two sticks.

He then joined the cupbearers, and as his flowing garments interfered with his movements, he girt his sword on scabbardless, and to impress them with his insanity grasped the blade till his blood flowed. He then succeeded in making them all drunk, so that they were unable to stir from the room. At length, all being asleep, he cut the cords supporting the curtain which covered the room, so that it fell down, and then fastened it to the ground over the men; after which he set the building on fire, and they were all destroyed. He then goes and kills the king, first upbraiding him for his crimes, and then retires to a safe place to watch the progress of events. But popular feeling setting in his favour, he soon reappears, and is proclaimed king.

We shall not pursue his story any further; nor will we detain our readers by describing the return journey to Copenhagen. Having heard in our young days of Roskilda, or Rosekild, as the ancient capital of Denmark, we resolved to visit it, and started off by railway the next morning. A rosy-faced, fair-haired Dane, who spoke English like a native, was of great service to us here; he was a native of Roskilda, and volunteered to cicerone us; now as we knew only two words of Danish—for German is not spoken here—it was no small advantage to us to have an interpreter. By the way, as he was pointing out a church on the journey, as being richly endowed, he told us of a curious custom which obtains here. The widow of the incumbent or holder receives a pension, to be deducted from the salary of the next incumbent. The cathedral of Roskilda is a Gothic, red, brick building; the interior, once covered with gorgeous frescoes, is now nearly entirely whitewashed; it is, however, undergoing restoration. As there is no stained glass, the effect is cold and dreary; but the proportions of the building are noble. The same hand which overlaid the frescoes with whitewash painted the oak-carved stalls stone-colour.

Roskilda is especially interesting as being the burial-place of the old Danish kings; the earlier tombs are mostly in the vaults, and are almost universally covered with palls of black velvet, starred with gold or silver, according to the sex of the deceased—gold being for the kings and princes, and silver for queens and princesses. There are a great many tombs in a side chapel, and among others that of Louisa, daughter of George the Third of England, and the wife of Frederick the Fifth of Denmark, a princess much beloved in Denmark; she died very young.

Under some portraits of the earlier kings we saw the words “et rex Angliæ,” a title no doubt retained long after the Danish reign had been forgotten in England, just as the title of Rex Galliæ was retained by our own kings down to the time of George III. There are two marks in a pillar, said to be the heights of Christian I., and Peter the Great; the former’s height is about seven feet, while the latter is not more than four feet five inches.

The once famous Roskilda is now a miserable village, and we were forced to satisfy ourselves with such scanty fare as the very humble inn of the place could produce. One side of the town lies on the banks of the fiord which winds round to Copenhagen, and here are remains of bathing establishments; here, no doubt, once were innumerable bathing-houses, and pleasure-barges and boats crowded the lake, and there was all the parade of fashion and pleasure; but that must have been many years ago, for now there are no barges, and no boats; and the wind sweeps over the lake with not more than one solitary fisherman’s sail to check it in its course, and where once the chivalry of Denmark trod, the rush grows long and rank, and Roskilda and its glories are part and parcel of the past.