Free Rogue's Gallery by Robert Barnard Page B

at Wittenburg in a translation of the play by William Shaksberd (rumoured to be a pseudonym of the essayist Francis Bacon). He’d got the part because his ambitions for a crown were well-known.
    I was pretty sure of what was going to happen next. Hammy was going to go up on to the battlements and the ghost would appear (in the white-sheeted person of O’Ratio or one of his soldierly mates), and take Hamlet aside and tell him he’d been murdered.
    How did I know this? Because O’Ratio was one of those hangers-on of royalty who finds out what the royal personage most wants to hear, then tells him it.
    I was confirmed in this view two days later when Hammy came to me all ineffectually excited and told me he’d had an encounter with the ghost of his father.
    â€˜He took me apart from the others,’ he said solemnly, his language becoming suitably elevated, ‘and imparted a matter of great moment.’
    â€˜Oh?’ I said. ‘The colour of the fourth horse of the Apocalypse?’
    â€˜My sire was murdered by his brother,’ said Hammy, ignoring me. ‘Claudius poured poison in his ear while he slept.’
    â€˜How does he know if he was asleep?’
    â€˜He has passed through to that state where knowledge is not limited as it is limited by our worldly state, Pat.’
    â€˜Ah,’ I said. I wished he wouldn’t call me Pat. Royalty should not be matey. And he should give me my title: Earl of Duntoomey, in the County of Killarney. I had no seat, no money, no post at court, but I was descended from the second last king of Ireland, on both sides of the blanket, and I wished he would use my title, to distinguish me from that direct descendent of an itinerant Irish mathematician, O’Ratio.
    I was meditating how to take this matter of the supposed ghost further when we were fortunately interrupted by Ophelia, the daughter of the new king’s first minister. She had been making a great nuisance of herself since Hammy’s return to court. And so had her poisonous rat-pack jerk of a brother on her behalf.
    â€˜Hamlet, what ails you? What does this change towards me mean?’
    â€˜Nothing, madam, except that I have seen a wider world.’
    â€˜Before you went we had something together—’
    â€˜Nothing, madam. Nothing whatever. If you had something it was entirely in your imagination. A royal does not marry into the political class. It would destroy all our credibility.’
    â€˜But you said—’
    â€˜I said nothing. Go and find some religious order, preferably a closed one, and shut your disappointments away with others of your self-deluded kind.’
    Ophelia dashed off weeping. I had little sympathy. I had every reason to doubt that Hammy had ever given cause tohope to any member of her sex. But she had given me time to think.
    â€˜Did you know there’s a travelling theatre company in town?’ I asked.
    â€˜Really?’ said Hammy, perking up. ‘Do they have any parts unfilled?’
    â€˜Nothing suitable for your rank and talents,’ I said hurriedly. ‘They are performing The Mousetrap. ’
    â€˜That old thing. Everyone’s seen it.’
    â€˜I doubt whether your Uncle Claudius is a great playgoer,’ I said. Hammy raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘Do you remember that bit towards the end acted in dumb show?’ I asked him.
    That was a cliché of that branch of the revenge tragedy commonly called the whodiddit. The audience was shown the truth of what had happened by having the murder silently re-enacted.
    â€˜The murderer comes in while – right!’ said Hammy – ‘while the victim is asleep.’
    â€˜Exactly. And poisons the glass of aquavit that the victim always keeps at his bedside.’
    â€˜Ah – pity …’
    â€˜What if you, Hammy, commanded a royal performance here at Elsinore. They’re only crap actors. They’ll be happy with a few