A Midnight Fantasy | Page 8

day Hamlet brought her, as peace-offering, a slender gold flask curiously wrought in niello, which he had had filled with a costly odor at an apothecary's as he came along.
"I never saw so lean a thing as that same culler of simples," said Hamlet, laughing; "a matter of ribs and shanks, a mere skeleton painted black. It is a rare essence, though. He told me its barbaric botanical name, but it escapes me."
"That which we call a rose," said Juliet, holding the perfumery to her nostrils and inclining herself prettily towards him, "would smell as sweet by any other name."
O Youth and Love! O fortunate Time!
There was a banquet almost every night at the Capulets', and the Montagues, up the street, kept their blinds drawn down, and Lady Montague, who had four marriageable, tawny daughters on her hands, was livid with envy at her neighbor's success. She would rather have had two or three Montagues prodded through the body than that the prince should have gone to the rival house.
Happy Prince!
If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Laertes, and the rest of the dismal people at Elsinore, could have seen him now, they would not have known him. Where were his wan looks and biting speeches? His eyes were no longer filled with mournful speculation. He went in glad apparel, and took the sunshine as his natural inheritance. If he ever fell into moodiness--it was partly constitutional with him--the shadow fled away at the first approach of that "loveliest weight on lightest foot." The sweet Veronese had nestled in his empty heart, and filled it with music. The ghosts and visions that used to haunt him were laid forever by Juliet's magic.
Happy Juliet!
Her beauty had taken a new gloss. The bud bad grown into a flower, redeeming the promises of the bud. If her heart beat less wildly, it throbbed more strongly. If she had given Hamlet of her superabundance of spirits, he had given her of his wisdom and discretion. She had always been a great favorite in society; but Verona thought her ravishing now. The mantua-makers cut their dresses by her patterns, and when she wore turquoise, garnets went ont of style. Instead of the groans and tears, and all those distressing events which might possibly have happened if Juliet had persisted in loving Romeo--listen to her laugh and behold her merry eyes!
Every morning either Peter or Gregory might have been seen going up Hamlet's staircase with a note from Juliet--she had ceased to send the Nurse on discovering her lover's antipathy to that person--and some minutes later either Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines into very choice Italian:--
"Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt Truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love."
To be sure, he had originally composed this quatrain for Ophelia; but what would you have? He had scarcely meant it then; he meant it now; besides, a felicitous rhyme never goes out of fashion. It always fits.
While transcribing the verse his thoughts naturally reverted to Ophelia, for the little poesy was full of a faint scent of the past, like a pressed flower. His conscience did not prick him at all. How fortunate for him and for her that matters had gone no further between them? Predisposed to melancholy, and inheriting a not very strong mind from her father, Ophelia was a lady who needed cheering up, if ever poor lady did. He, Hamlet, was the last man on the globe with whom she should have had any tender affiliation. If they had wed, they would have caught each other's despondency, and died, like a pair of sick ravens, within a fortnight. What had become of her? Had she gone into a nunnery? He would make her abbess, if he ever returned to Elsinore.
After a month or two of courtship, there being no earthly reason to prolong it, Hamlet and Juliet were privately married in the Franciscan Chapel, Friar Laurence officiating; but there was a grand banquet that night at the Capulets', to which all Verona went. At Hamlet's intercession, the Montagues were courteously asked to this festival. To the amazement of every one the Montagues accepted the invitation and came, and were treated royally, and the long, lamentable feud--it would have sorely puzzled either house to explain what it was all about--was at an end. The