27 SCENE I." To play at loggats with them." The game of loggats is a country play, in which the players throw at a stake, or jack with round pins. In Ben Jonson's 'Tale of a Tub' we have :

"Now are they tossing of his legs and arms,
Like loggats at a pear-tree."

The scene of the grave diggers has always been the horror of the old French school of criticism. Voltaire, by a great generalisation, calls the works of Shakspere a bundle of "monstruosités et fossoyeurs." But Voltaire's criticism upon the grave-digging scene is far

less amusing than that of M. De La Baume Desdossat, who, in 1757, immortalised himself by the publication of a Pastorale Héroique.' He tells us, "All that the imagination can invent most horrible, most gloomy, most ferocious, constitutes the matter of the English tragedies, which are monsters in which sublime sentiments and ideas are found side by side with the flattest buffooneries and the grossest jests. Shakspere in one tragedy introduces a game at bowls with death's heads upon the stage." ("Fait jouer à la boule avec des têtes de mort sur le théâtre.")

28 SCENE I.-"Imperial Cæsar," &c.

The dwellings of our countrymen in the time of Elizabeth were rude enough to render it often requisite to

"Stop a hole, to keep the wind away."

The following is from Harrison's 'Description of England,' 1577: "In the fenny countries and northern parts, unto this day, for lack of wood, they are enforced to continue the ancient manner of building (houses set up with a few posts and many raddles), so in the open and champain countries, they are enforced, for want of stuff, to use no studs at all, but only frank-posts, and such principals, with here and there a girding, whereunto they fasten their splints or raddles, and then cast it all over with thick clay to keep out the wind. Certes this rude kind of building made the Spaniards in Queen Mary's day to wonder, and say, 'these English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king.'"

THE local illustrations which we have given of this play are from original sketches made by Mr. G. F. Sargent. Those of buildings, have, of course, no association with the period of the action. But they possess an interest; being in some degree connected with the supposed scenes of Hamlet's history, and with the popular traditions which have most likely sprung from the European reputation of Shakspere's Hamlet. For example, we have this passage in Coxe's "Travels: "Adjoining to a royal palace, which stands about half a mile from Kronborg, is a garden which curiosity led us to visit; it is called Hamlet's Garden, and is said, by tradition, to be the very spot where the murder of his father was perpetrated." The vignette above shows a sequestered part of this garden, which is called "Hamlet's Grave." Mr. Inglis, in an agreeable volume published in Constable's Miscellany,' describes his anxiety to see this garden, upon the evening of his arrival at Elsinore. "The centinel," he says, "to whom I addressed myself, laid aside his musket, and himself conducted me to the enclosure."

The Castle of Kronborg, or Kronenburg, in the immediate neighbourhood of Elsinore, is a fortification which is invariably associated with Shakspere's Hamlet. Mr. Inglis learnt that very few travellers visited Elsinore; but that " occasionally passengers in English vessels which happened to be lying to, and sometimes also passengers in French vessels, landed at the castle, owing to its connexion with Hamlet and Shakspere." A Danish translation of Hamlet, he learnt, was often acted at Elsinore. We present, therefore, to our readers what the few passengers who visit Elsinore land to see, walking up to the castle, as Mr. Inglis did, thinking all the way "of Hamlet and Ophelia, and the murdered King." The engraving at the head of Act I. is a view of the platform at the Castle of Kronborg; that at the head of Act III. the Palace of Kronborg, within the fortifications. We have also given a general view of Elsinore. The view of the Palace of Rosenberg, which is at Copenhagen, is introduced to exhibit the residence of a Danish noble in the time of Shakspere.

Ir has been conjectured, and with sufficient reason, by Mr. Strutt and other writers on the subject of costume, that the dress of the Danes during the tenth and eleventh centuries differed little, if anything, in shape from that of the Anglo-Saxons; and although from several scat tered passages in the works of the Welsh bards and in the old Danish ballads, we gather that black was a favourite colour, we are expressly told by Arnold of Lubeck, that at the time he wrote (circa 1127), they had become "wearers of scarlet, purple and fine linen;" and by Wallingford, who died in 1214, that "the Danes were effeminately gay in their dress, combed their hair once a day, bathed once a week, and often changed their attire." Of their pride in their long hair, and of the care they took of it, several anecdotes have been preserved. Harold Harfagre, i. e., Fairlocks, derived his name from the beauty of his long-flowing ringlets, which are said to have hung down to his girdle, and to have been like silken or golden threads: and these precious curls he made a vow to his mistress to neglect till he had completed the conquest of Norway for her love". A young Danish warrior going to be beheaded begged of an executioner Torfæus, 'Hist. Nor.'

that his hair might not be touched by a slave, or stained with his blood. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, we find

"The long-haired one, illustrious in battle, The bright lord of the Danes:" and the Knyghtlinga Saga describes Canute's hair as profuse.

In a MS. register of Hide Abbey, written in the time of Canute, that monarch is represented in a tunic and mantel, the latter fastened with cords or ribands, and tassels. He wears shoes and stockings reaching nearly to the knees, with embroidered tops, or it may be chausses or pantaloons, with an embroidered band beneath the knee; for the drawing being uncoloured leaves the matter in doubt. When Canute's body was examined at Winchester in 1766, it was adorned with several gold and silver bands, and a wreath or circlet was round the head. A jewelled ring was upon one finger, and in one of his hands a silver penny. Bracelets of massive gold were worn by all persons of rank, and their most sacred oath before their conversion to Christianity was by their "holy bracelet;" a sacred ornament of this kind being kept on the altars of b Jomswinkinga Saga in Bartholinus. Archæologia,' vol. iii.

their gods, or worn round the arm of the priest. Scarlet was the colour originally worn by the kings, queens, and princes of Denmark. In the ballad of 'Childe Axelvold' we find that as soon as the young man discovered himself to be of royal race, he "put on the scarlet red;" and in the ballad of 'Hero Hogen and the Queen of Danmarck,' the queen is said to have rode first "in red scarlet;" the word red being used in both these instances to distinguish the peculiar sort of scarlets, as in those times scarlet, like purple, was used to express any gradation of colour formed by red and blue, from indigo to crimson. It thus happens, curiously enough, that the objections of the Queen and Claudius to the appearance of Hamlet in black are authorised, not only by the well-known custom of the early Danes, never to mourn for their nearest and dearest relatives or friends, but also by the fact that, although black was at least their favourite, if not, indeed, their national colour, Black bordered with red is to this day common amongst the northern peasantry.

Hamlet, as a prince of the blood, should have been attired in the royal scarlet. Of the armour of the Danes at the close of the tenth century we have several verbal descriptions. "By the laws of Gula, said to have been established by Hacon the Good, who died in 963, it is ordered that every possessor of six marks should furnish himself with a red shield of two boards in thickness, a spear, an axe, or a sword. He who was worth twelve marks, in addition to the above, was ordered to procure a steel cap; whilst he who had eighteen marks was obliged to have also a coat of mail, or a tunic of quilted linen or cloth, and all usual military weapons, amongst which the bipennis, or double-bladed axe, was the most national. The Danish helmet, like the Saxon, had the nasal, which in Scandinavia is called nef-biòrg (nose-guard), and to which the collar of the mail-hood, which covered the chin, was frequently hooked up, so as to leave little of the face unguarded except the eyes.