Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/465



— apprehension of our great dramatic poet has long been a laughing stock among all English-speaking folk. It was bad enough when they scoffed at and reviled the author of "Hamlet" and the "Tempest;" it was worse when they relaxed so far as to mingle patronage with sneers; but it is worst now that they have begun to do him honor, and even to pay him the compliment of illustration. We have before us one of those fine, beautifully colored lithographs in which the French excel, the subject of which is described as "Hamlet et Ophelia." A brawny athlete, with the head of a modern Parisian fop, but dressed in the costume of about three hundred years ago, reclines on a purple cushion before a simpering young woman, who wears a costume of about the same period, but whose head is coiffée in the fashion of eight or ten years ago, when this print was published. These young persons are Hamlet and Ophelia; and Hamlet leans his elbow upon Ophelia's lap and plays with her fan. Just behind the pair rises the base of an Ionic pillar; and, prominent in the picture is a statue of Venus, with Cupid at her feet, raised upon a pedestal. This work of the pencil receives at the hand of some profound French student of the divine Williams the following Stupendous explanation: "Bien qu' Ophelia fut la fille et complice de Polonius, l'assassin du Roi son père, Hamelet cherchait dans ses regards amoureux le calme à sa tristesse, et une vengeance digue de ce crime que Polonius paye de sa vie sous les yeux mêmes de la Reine, qui en devint folle." Which being interpreted is, "Although Ophelia was the daughter and the accomplice of Polonius, the assassin of the king, his father, Hamlet sought in her enamored eyes an assuagement of his grief and a vengeance worthy of that crime, which Polonius expiated with his life before the very eyes of the queen, who thereupon went mad." Before that exposition of the plot and purpose of Shakespeare's great philosophical tragedy all other commentators pale their ineffectual fires. In the words of Æneas to Dido, they are dumb-foundered, their hair stands on end, and their tongues cleave to the roofs of their mouths.

— what right, on what principle of justice, not to speak of courtesy, do gentlemen occupy the seats of the so-called "Ladies' Cabin" in ferry-boats, thereby compelling those for whose use the cabin is set apart, to stand? Any morning or evening, foul or fair, on almost any of the boats plying to and from New York (and we fear the case is the same in other cities) the spectacle may be seen of men coolly seated in the Ladies' Cabin, and ladies standing uncomfortably, and perhaps laden with bundles, in the crowd. The unfairness is this, that ladies cannot occupy the "Gentlemen's Cabin" because it is foul with tobacco smoke and filthy with tobacco juice. Could they do so, and take the seats assigned to gentlemen there, it would be somewhat juster; but, as it is now, gentlemen have (or take) the benefit of both cabins, leaving ladies sure of neither; and that is not an equable division of accommodations. If a gentleman want a seat let him go into his own cabin. If he answer that that is full, or that he cannot stand the smoke, surely both these objections apply to ladies. If he reply that he is tired, let him wait for another boat. If he rejoin that he is in a hurry, then we say, let him stand, unless he can show that ladies cannot be either tired or in a hurry. In that