at is vain, withal it never insists on
leading; the composer appears to follow the poet.) Laforgue's Salome
tries to sport with the head of John the Baptist, stumbles, loses her
footing, and falls from the machicolated wall on jagged rocks below,
as the head floats out to sea, miraculously alight. There are wit and
philosophy and the hint of high thoughts in Salome, though her heart
like glass is cold, empty, and crystalline.

The subtitle of Hamlet, which heads the volume, is--Or, the Results of
Filial Devotion--and the story, as Mr. Hale asserts, is Laforgue's
masterpiece. Here is a Hamlet for you, a prince whose antics are
enough to disturb the dust of Shakespeare and make the angels on high
weep with hysterical laughter. Not remotely hinting at burlesque, the
character is delicately etched. By the subtle withdrawal of certain
traits, this Hamlet behaves as a man would who has been trepanned and
his moral nature removed by an analytical surgeon. He is irony
personified and is the most delightful company for one weary of the
Great Good Game around and about us, the game of deceit, treachery,
politics, love, social intercourse, religion, and commerce. Laforgue's
Hamlet sees through the hole in the mundane millstone and his every
phrase is like the flash of a scimitar.

It is the irony of his position, the irony of his knowledge that he is
Shakespeare's creation and must live up to his artistic paternity;
the irony that he is au fond a cabotin, a footlight strutter, a
mouther of phrases metaphysical and a despiser of Ophelia (chere
petite glu he names her) that are all so appealing. Intellectual
braggart, this Hamlet resides after his father Horwendill's "irregular
decease" in a tower hard by the Sound, from which Helsingborg may be
seen. An old, stagnant canal is beneath his windows. In his chamber
are waxen figures of his mother, Gerutha, and his uncle-father, Fengo.
He daily pierces their hearts with needles after a bad old-fashioned
mediaeval formula of witchcraft. But it avails naught. With a fine
touch he seeks for his revenge by having enacted before their
Majesties of Denmark his own play. They incontinently collapse in
mortal nausea, for they are excellent critics.

Such a play scene, withal Shakespearian! "Stability thy name is
woman!" he exclaims bitterly, for he fears love with the compromising
domesticity of marriage. It is his rigorous transvaluation of all
moral values and conventionalities that procla