“It’s pretty rough,” said Napoleon.  “As the poet ought to have said, ‘Oh, Hamlet, Hamlet, what crimes are committed in thy name!’”

“I feel as badly about the play as Hamlet does,” said Shakespeare, after a moment of silent thought.  “I don’t bother much about this wild Western business, though, because I think the introduction of the bloodhounds and the Topsies makes us both more popular in that region than we should be otherwise.  What I object to is the way we are treated by these so-called first-class intellectual actors in London and other great cities.  I’ve seen Hamlet done before a highly cultivated audience, and, by Jove, it made me blush.”

“Me too,” sighed Hamlet.  “I have seen a man who had a walk on him that suggested spring-halt and locomotor ataxia combined impersonating my graceful self in a manner that drove me almost crazy.  I’ve heard my ’To be or not to be’ soliloquy uttered by a famous tragedian in tones that would make a graveyard yawn at mid-day, and if there was any way in which I could get even with that man I’d do it.”

“It seems to me,” said Blackstone, assuming for the moment a highly judicial manner—­“it seems to me that Shakespeare, having got you into this trouble, ought to get you out of it.”

“But how?” said Shakespeare, earnestly.  “That’s the point.  Heaven knows I’m willing enough.”

Hamlet’s face suddenly brightened as though illuminated with an idea.  Then he began to dance about the room with an expression of glee that annoyed Doctor Johnson exceedingly.

“I wish Darwin could see you now,” the Doctor growled.  “A kodak picture of you would prove his arguments conclusively.”

“Rail on, O philosopher!” retorted Hamlet.  “Rail on!  I mind your railings not, for I the germ of an idea have got.”

“Well, go quarantine yourself,” said the Doctor.  “I’d hate to have one of your idea microbes get hold of me.”

“What’s the scheme?” asked Shakespeare.

“You can write a play for me!” cried Hamlet.  “Make it a farce-tragedy.  Take the modern player for your hero, and let me play him.  I’ll bait him through four acts.  I’ll imitate his walk.  I’ll cultivate his voice.  We’ll have the first act a tank act, and drop the hero into the tank.  The second act can be in a saw-mill, and we can cut his hair off on a buzz-saw.  The third act can introduce a spile-driver with which to drive his hat over his eyes and knock his brains down into his lungs.  The fourth act can be at Niagara Falls, and we’ll send him over the falls; and for a grand climax we can have him guillotined just after he has swallowed a quart of prussic acid and a spoonful of powdered glass.  Do that for me, William, and you are forgiven.  I’ll play it for six hundred nights in London, for two years in New York, and round up with a one-night stand in Boston.”

“It sounds like a good scheme,” said Shakespeare, meditatively.  “What shall we call it?”