The Tune of the Time

THE Prince came in last, according to his well-known habit. He was dressed, as usual, in black, somewhat vaguely fashioned, as indeed were all the garments of the group awaiting him. Even thus, clad sketchily in the Elizabethan or Jacobean mode, had they originally presented themselves to the imagination of their Author, whose interest in them was rather dramatic than sartorial. The background against which they moved was also vague, and largely composed of arras.

Hamlet seated himself, as is his custom, opposite the King. He knitted his brows thoughtfully.

‘It may,’ he said, ‘have roused conjecture in your minds that I should summon you thus to this undiscovered country. ’

‘My lord,’ said Polonius, who somewhat resembled the picture of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in the National Portrait Gallery, ‘we assume that there is always a method in your madness. ’ ‘It is certainly time,’ said Horatio reasonably, ‘to seek an unknown locality. We have suffered much in the regions we have known. ’

‘Ay, there’s the rub,’ said the Prince. ‘It is upon this question I have called you. We are, I am afraid, to suffer more. ’

The Ghost groaned loudly. ‘I could a tale unfold —’ he began.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Hamlet, ‘I know; your individual, recognizable armor and your sable silvered beard have been ignored; you have even been reduced to a light. We have all been wronged through the centuries, in a variety of ways, I,’— he frowned darkly, — ‘ I have been played by Women. ’

‘I have been persistently represented, Your Highness, ’ said Polonius, ‘as a buffoon. ’

‘What I minded most,’ lisped little Osric, slipping to the front, ‘was that detestable Modern Dress. ’ (He was, unlike the rest, attired in brilliant blue and green like a water fly; just as he had floated idly into the mind of his Creator.)

At the words ‘Modern Dress’ a shudder ran through the group. ‘Fashionable mourning in the mad scene!’ exclaimed Ophelia, her violet eyes brimmed with indignant tears. ‘Alas, we know what we are, but know not what we may be in the hands of a producer!’

Hamlet smiled bitterly. ‘A Tuxedo and a cigarette in my greatest soliloquy!’ said he.

‘But, my lord,’ interjected Horatio, in his quieting voice, ‘what is the new emergency? Have we not always, in some way, been misrepresented?’

‘Never,’ said Hamlet, ‘with the perverse persistency, the fatuous selfsatisfaction, of the present day. Thence arises my fear of evils that we yet know not of.’

‘What can it be now?’ said the First Player. ‘Masks, perhaps? They made us pretend we were marionettes once in The Murder of Gonzago. I was thinking a talking movie—’

The Queen spoke, in her sad contralto. ‘Are new torments indeed preparing for us, my son?’

‘Madam,’ said the Prince, ’I observe that another novel custom has appeared upon the stage. As we have always been the predestined victims of novelty, and made to march to the tune of the time, I feel a kind of gaingiving lest we should now be required to Think Aloud.’

‘Methinks, ’ said Polonius courteously, ‘Your Highness should be accustomed — ’

‘I know,’ said the Prince; ‘but what will the rest of you do? And the fact is, even I never did speak my whole mind. But that is n’t the worst —’

The dramatis personœ gathered about him in white-eyed suspense.

‘They may insist upon our thinking,’ said he impressively, ‘not only aloud, but in the Modern Manner. ’

‘Impossible,’ said the First Priest. ‘I cannot think in the Modern Manner. It can’t be done. ’

‘Under hypnotism,’ said Hamlet musingly. ‘They might call up the Unconscious, you know. You may not have followed the Freudian philosophy, Horatio — but I assure you that there are more things in the past of the average adult than we dreamt of in our philosophy at Wittenberg!’

‘We might, perhaps, try it,’ suggested Horatio mildly, ‘lest it be suddenly demanded of us, and we thus be put at a loss. ’

‘How would you manage a long running aside?’ said the First Player curiously. ‘Just as a matter of technique.'

‘I think the best way would be to turn obliquely away from the others,’ said Rosencrantz.

‘And speak in a monotone,’ said Guildenstern.

‘Attempt it now,’ commanded Claudius.

At the royal mandate, the two gentlemen stepped forward.

Said Rosencrantz, under his breath, ‘Act second, scene second, Guildenstern. My cue is “As fits a king’s remembrance”; you’ll have to feel for yours. ’

Said Guildenstern, essaying the Modern Manner, ‘Right oh!’

Each assumed an introverted expression, with eyes half closed.

Said Rosencrantz, as in a kind of trance:—

‘Being of so young days brought up with him (I never liked him — never understood him — he had a nasty way — superior — not surprised he’s crazy — always was a little off — good chance now to pay him out . . .) ’

Said Guildenstern, similarly entranced: —

‘When we were eight years old I remember that he gave me a black eye — something to do with marbles — said I cheated — made a deep rut in my experience — shaped my entire life — resentment — fear . . .'

They now opened their eyes, recovered consciousness, and continued the dialogue according to routine; with occasional lapses, however, into the new method.

Said Rosencrantz: ‘Put your dread pleasures more into command than to entreaty. (Anyhow, we can’t help it!)'

Said Guildenstern: ‘But we both obey. (I hope to heaven they’ll make it worth our while.) ’

‘Enough!’ said Hamlet. ‘Not bad for a beginning — especially as it was n’t the juicy part. But, in fact, they would n’t demand improvisation; there would have to be a great deal of rewriting — probably done in the United States of America, where this method was developed. What they will do with Mother and me — ’

‘Surely no man would DARE!’ exclaimed a new and deeper voice.

All turned in the direction of the sound, and instantly fell on their knees. ‘The Presence!’ whispered the Ghost, instinctively recognizing another ghost.

A dazzling light, proceeding from the same point as the voice, increased, and almost prevented the features of the speaker from being seen; but by flashes a great brow was visible.

‘Sire,’ said Prince Hamlet, ‘far be it from me to contradict Him to whom I owe my being. But, even in the past, you may recall Dryden and Nahum Tate — and Garrick. Only the other day, some well-meaning persons made the Falstaff plays into a musical comedy. ’

The light proceeding from the Presence had turned deep red, emitting darts of fire.

‘With all due reverence both to my Creator and to my Prince,’ said Horatio, ‘I do not greatly apprehend this form of sacrilege. It involves too many complications. What alarms me is the tendency to impiety in the form of the novel.’

‘Ay,’ mused Hamlet, ‘custom hath made it a property of easiness — Helen, Odysseus, Galahad, Adam — and why not Hamlet, unless the idea were immediately copyrighted? ’T were good to delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon. ’

There was a minute’s silence. Then Hamlet spoke again, on a deeper note.

‘Sire,’ said he, ‘you gave me once this boon, that I should express forever, in unforgettable words, the whole duty of the player. Would that you had empowered me also to express, for all time, the whole duty of the audience or the reader; had commanded me to make all men know that we — and even you, great Sire! — have our own time, and move to its own tune; that we inhabit our own strange realm of savagery and splendor and passion and delicate elegance and lark-like song; that our words and our garments and our very souls are woven of a remote past which cannot by any cheap trick be translated to this earth; that between us and the men of all centuries to come there is a great gulf fixed, which we can never cross; but that they, by an effort of the imagination, uncongenial indeed to the indolent, but immeasurably rewarding, can and must cross to us—'

Here Horatio made a conventional gesture, and exclaimed: —

Instantly the place and persons vanished, like the fabric of a dream. The last appearance was that of a great Cloud, angrily red, and palpitating as with inner lightning, rushing away above the sea.