KING. Well, you close their eyes, and let us be gone. NURSE. Ay, ay. Come hence! come hence! KING. I will; I will. Oh, oh! how lonely I shall feel hereafter! I am steeped in misery up to my ears at seventy-seven years of age. But where are you? NURSE! Here, here! KING. You will not feel angry with me? Let us go to breakfast. Will there be salad for breakfast? I should like a little salad. NURSE. Yes, yes. You shall have some, my lord. KING. I do not know why; I feel somewhat melancholy to-day. Good God! good God! How unhappy the dead do look! [_Exit with_ NURSE. ANGUS. Another night such as this, and all our heads will have turned white. [_Exeunt all save the_ NUNS, _who begin singing the Miserere while conveying the corpses towards the bed. The church bells cease sounding. Nightingales are heard warbling without. A cock jumps on the window-sill, and crows._ When we begin to read this piece we are startled, and ask: ‘Why is all this so familiar to me? Of what does it remind me?’ After a few pages it all at once becomes clear: the whole thing is a kind of cento from Shakespeare! Every character, every scene, every speech in any way essential to the piece! King Hjalmar is put together out of King Lear and Macbeth; Lear in his madness and manner of expressing himself, Macbeth in his share in the murder of the Princess Maleine. Queen Anne is patched up out of Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude; Prince Hjalmar is unmistakably Hamlet, with his obscure speeches, his profound allusions and his inner struggles between filial duty and morality; the nurse is from Romeo and Juliet; Angus is Horatio; Vanox and Stephano are Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, with an admixture of Marcellus and Bernardo, and all the subordinate characters, the fool, the doctor, the courtiers, etc., bear the physiognomy of Shakespeare’s characters. The piece begins in the following manner: _The Gardens of the Castle._ _Enter_ STEPHANO _and_ VANOX. VANOX. What o’clock is it? STEPHANO. Judging from the moon, it should be midnight. VANOX. I think ‘tis going to rain. Let us compare this with the first scene in _Hamlet_: _A platform before the Castle._ FRANCISCO ... BERNARDO. FRANCISCO. You come most carefully upon your hour. BERNARDO. ‘Tis now struck twelve.... FRANCISCO. ... ‘Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart, etc.