“What! why have you not just heard Hamlet say:
‘’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black’?”
“Examine at thy leisure the entire passages.”
“’Tis plagiarism!” ejaculated Jonson, ever ready to decry the works of another.
“Or—” began Nash.
“Hamlet was written by Marlowe,” interrupted Jonson.
“True,” answered Nash, nodding his head excitedly, “And much additional evidence exists confirmatory of your hastily given statement; but this time is all too short to compare the precepts of Polonius with Spencer’s ‘to stab when occasion serves,’ or with the meditations of Barabbas; or to note how Marlowe’s metaphysical musings concerning ‘This frail and transitory flesh,’ ‘the aspiring mind,’ ‘the incorporeal spirit,’ ‘the buzzing fear’ of what comes after death, have been joined and compacted in this play of Hamlet. Note in your study how smoothly the polished lines of Marlowe’s acknowledged works can be run in between the lines of this play without the slightest jar or impairment; note how many of the speeches wind up with the last two lines rhyming; note the tendency in all toward bombast where excess of passion is expressed.”
This conversation, while it pleased and amused the listener, awakened in him a fear of no trifling character. He would have made his exit from the box, but he dared not arise and pass before the eyes of those behind him. They might recognize him, and such recognition was to be avoided. Act III was in progress, and Burbage, as Hamlet, held the audience spell-bound. Ophelia, played by the boy, Thomas Deak, of the children of the Chapel, had awakened the sympathy of every auditor; and in praise and honor of the creative genius of the drama an inexhaustible cup was filling for the lips of all his lovers through the coming centuries.
No sooner had the act closed than the conversation was resumed between the two dramatists who had carried on the former discussion:
“‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns,’” whispered Nash, “is much like the expression of Mortimer, who, upon contemplation of death, says, in Edward II: