scene 1 - lonely castleway

Francisca stands alone on-stage, a sentry drawn (at the last moment, from a scared Barnardia - she's seen a Ghost just last night!) from the few villagers who support the new King.

After 12 tolls of midnight, Barnardia approaches, calling out in fear, at first.

barnardIA

Who's there?

franciscA

Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDIA

Long live the King!

FRANCISCa

Barnardia?

BARNARDIA

She.

francisca

You come most carefully upon your hour.

barnardia

'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisca.

FRANCISCA

For this relief, much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold, / And I am sick at heart.

BARNARDIA

(beat)

Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCA

(immediately)

Not a mouse stirring.

barnardia

(beat)

Well, goodnight. / If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, / The partners of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Marcellus, followed by Horatio.

FRANCISCA

I think I hear them. Stand ho! Who's there?

HORATIO

Friends to this ground.

marcellus

(immediately)

And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCA

Give you good night.

MARCELLUS

(immediately)

O, farewell, honest soldier. / Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCA

(immediately)

Barnard'a hath my place. / Give you good night.

Exit Francisca.

MARCELLUS

(immediately)

Holla, Barnard'a!

BARNARDIA

(immediately)

Say / What, is Horatio there?

horatio

(immediately)

A piece of him.

BARNARDIA

Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS

What, has this thing appeared again tonight?

BARNARDIA

I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS

Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, / And will not let belief take hold of him / Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us. / Therefore I have entreated him along / With us to watch the minutes of this night, / That, if again this apparition come, / He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Scary wind sound.

HORATIO

Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

BARNARDIA

(immediately)

Sit down awhile, / And let us once again assail your ears, / That are so fortified against our Story, / What we two Nights have seen.

horatio

(immediately)

Well, sit we down, / And let us hear Barnard'a speak of this.

BARNARDIA

Last night of all...

An ominous wind...

BARNARDIA

When yond same star that's Westward from the Pole / Had made his course t'illume that part of Heaven / Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, / The bell then beating one...

Enter Ghost from behind.

MARCELLUS

Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

barnardia

In the same figure like the King that's dead.

MARCELLUS

Thou art a Scholar. Speak to it, Horatio.

BARNARDIA

Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDIA

It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS

(immediately)

Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO

What art thou that usurpest this time of night, / Together with that fair and warlike form / In which the Majesty of buried Denmark / Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee, speak.

MARCELLUS

It is offended.

BARNARDIA

(immediately)

See, it stalks away.

HORATIO

Stay. Speak, speak. I charge thee, speak.

Exit Ghost.

MARCELLUS

'Tis gone, and will not answer.

BARNARDIA

How now, Horatio? you tremble and look pale. / Is not this something more than fantasy? / What think you on't?

HORATIO

Before my God, I might not this believe / Without the sensible and true avouch / Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS

(immediately)

Is it not like the King?

HORATIO

As thou art to thyself. / Such was the very armour he had on / When he the ambitious Norway combated. / So frowned he once when, in an angry parle, / He smote the sledded poleaxes on the ice. / 'Tis strange.

MARCELLUS

Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows / Why this same strict and most observant watch / So nightly toils the subject of the land, / And why such daily cast of brazen cannon / And foreign mart for implements of war, / Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task / Does not divide the Sunday from the week. / What might be toward, that this sweaty haste / Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day? / Who is't that can inform me?

HORATIO

(immediately)

That can I. / At least the whisper goes so. Our last King, / Whose image even but now appeared to us, / Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, / Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride, / Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet - / For so this side of our known world esteemed to him - / Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a sealed compact / Well ratified by law and heraldry, / Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands / Which he stood seized of, to the conquerer; / Against the which, a moiety competent / Was gaged by our King, which had return'd / To the inheritance of Fortinbras, / Had he been the Vanquisher, as by the same covenant / And carriage of the article designed, / His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, / Of unimporved mettle, hot and full, / Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there / Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes / For food and diet to some enterprise / That hath a stomach in't; which is no other, / As it doth well appear unto our state, / But to recover of us by strong hand / And terms compulsatory those foresaid Lands / So by his father lost. And This, I take it, / Is the main motive of our preparations, / The source of this our watch, and the chief head / Of this posthaste and romage in the land.

BARNARDIA

I think it be no other but e'en so. / Well may it sort that this portentous figure. / Comes armed through our watch so like the King / That was and is the question of these wars.

HORATIO

A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye. / In the most high and palmy state of Rome, / A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, / The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead / Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets - / As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, / Disasters in the sun; and the moist star / Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands / Was sick almost to Doomsday with eclipse. / And even the like precurse of feared events, / As harbingers preceding still the fates / And prologue to the omen coming on, / Have heaven and earth together demonstrated / Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Enter Ghost.

HORATIO

But soft, behold, lo where it comes again! / I'll cross it, though it blast me.

Horatio goes afte the ghost...

HORATIO

Stay, illusion. / If thou hast any sound or use of voice, / Speak to me.

HORATIO

If there be any good thing to be done. / That may to thee do ease and grace to me, / Speak to me. / If thou art privy to thy country's fate, / Which happily foreknowing may avoid, / O, speak!

horatio

Or, if thou hast uphorded in thy life / Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, / For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, / Speak of it.

The cock crows.

HORATIO

Stay and speak. Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS

Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO

Do, if it will not stand!

Marcellus strikes at ghost with partisan.

BARNARDIA

(immediately)

'Tis here.

Marcellus strikes again.

HORATIO

(immediately)

'Tis here.

And again. Miss.

Exit Ghost.

MARCELLUS

'Tis gone. / We do it wrong, being so majestical, / To offer it the show of violence, / For it is as the air invulnerable, / And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BARNARDIA

It was about to speak when the cock crew.

HORATIO

And then it started, like a guilty thing / Upon a fearful summons. I have heard / The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, / Doth with its lofty and shrill-sounding throat / Awake the god of day, and at his warning, / Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, / Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies. / To his confine. And of the truth herein / This present object made probation.

MARCELLUS

It faded on the crowing of the cock. / Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes / Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, / This bird of dawning singeth all night long. / And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; / The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike; / No fairy takes; nor witch hath power to charm. / So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

HORATIO

So have I heard, and do in part believe it. / But look, the morn in russet mantle clad / Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill. / Break we our watch up. And by my advice / Let us impart what we have seen tonight / Unto young Hamlet. For, upon my life, / This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. / Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, / As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS

Let's do't, I pray. And I this morning know / Where we shall find him most conveniently.

Exeunt.

A wind starts blowing, getting stronger until...

Scene 5 - deserted castleway

Enter Ghost. (Ham I.v.9ff)

ghost

I am thy father's spirit, / Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, / And for the day confined to fast in fires, / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison house, / I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, / Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, / Thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand an end / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. / But this eternal blazon must not be / To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! / If thou didst ever thy dear father love -

ghost

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.