Mallarm�, don’t you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris.

The one about Hamlet. He says: il se prom�ne, lisant au livre de lui-m�me, don’t you know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French town, don’t you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.

His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.

Hamlet

ou

Le Distrait

Pi�ce de Shakespeare

He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown:

Pi�ce de Shakespeare, don’t you know. It’s so French. The French point of view. Hamlet ou...