ACT I

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle. The Orestia begins with a sentry on a roof who gives a soliloquy

Enter Francisco and Barnardo, two sentinels.

BARNARDO.
Who’s there?

FRANCISCO.
Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.

BARNARDO.
Long live the King!

FRANCISCO.
Barnardo?

BARNARDO.
He.

FRANCISCO.
You come most carefully upon your hour.

BARNARDO.
’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO.
For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart. In the Orestia the sentry talks about the sorrow that has befallen Mycenae since Agamemnon has been away fighting in the Trojan War.

BARNARDO.
Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO.
Not a mouse stirring.

BARNARDO.
Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

FRANCISCO.
I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?

HORATIO.
Friends to this ground. Notice he does not say friends to the King but to Denmark

MARCELLUS   And liegemen to the Dane. To Hamlet’s father but not Claudius?

FRANCISCO.
Give you good night.

MARCELLUS.
O, farewell, honest soldier, who hath reliev’d you?

FRANCISCO.
Barnardo has my place. Give you good-night.

[Exit.]

MARCELLUS.
Holla, Barnardo!

BARNARDO.
Say, what, is Horatio there?

HORATIO.
A piece of him.

BARNARDO.
Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS.
What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?

BARNARDO.
I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS.
Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy, imagination, a hallucination.
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. Horatio doesn’t believe me so I’ve brought him along to prove that I’m not lying

HORATIO.
Tush, tush, ’twill not appear. Skeptical logical mind not ruled by superstition, epitome of Renaissance as opposed to the superstition of the Dark Ages

BARNARDO.
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.
Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

BARNARDO.
Last night of all,
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, burning light, fire in the sky like the signal fire from Troy
The bell then beating one—

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

Enter Ghost.

BARNARDO.
In the same figure, like the King that’s dead.

MARCELLUS.
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

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

HORATIO.
Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO
It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS.
Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO.
What art thou that usurp’st 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. By invoking heaven, Horatio means to compel it to speak

MARCELLUS.
It is offended.

BARNARDO.
See, it stalks away.

HORATIO.
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee speak! Nothing evil can stand against God or the name of heaven “Get thee behind me Satan”

[Exit Ghost.]

MARCELLUS.
’Tis gone, and will not answer. Why did it leave? Was it because it does not obey mortal’s demands even though they invoke God or because it is avoiding hearing about heaven?

BARNARDO.
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. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

MARCELLUS.
Is it not like the King?

HORATIO.
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he th’ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange. In the Orestia, both  Electra and Orestes wish that their father would rise up in full armor and  aide them in defeating Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Agamemnon spent ten years wearing armor in Troy fighting the war. Hamlet’s father, like Agamemnon, spent years fighting in a foreign land. He returns home expecting to spend the rest of his days in peace. Instead is murdered by someone he should have been able to trust implicitly…a member of his own family. If you can’t trust your wife (brother) who can you trust?

MARCELLUS.
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO.
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state. The ghost is an omen of bad luck. It could mean in regards to Fortanbras but most likely refers to the fate of pretty much everyone who lives at Elsinore. Most likely both things are true at the same time…it’s Shakespeare. It is an omen but not of a coming war with Fortinbras but of the death of practically everyone at the palace except Horatio.

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. Why are we preparing for war and are so intent that we are breaking one of the Commandments and do not observe Sabbath?
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.
That can I;
At least, the whisper goes so. Our last King, Gossiping
Whose image even but now appear’d to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick’d on by a most emulate pride, Hubris leads to a fall or Pride being a deadly sin
Dar’d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet,
For so this side of our known world esteem’d him,
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact, Old Fortinbras lost both his life and lands during a war which was led by Hamlet’s father. Priam lost his life and his lands because of a war which was led by Orestes’ father.
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands In ancient Greece, the combatants engaged in single combat not the whole army at once…no wonder it took them ten years to decide it. Hamlet’s father and old Fortinbras also engaged in single combat with Hamlet’s father emerging victorious.
Which he stood seiz’d of, to the conqueror;
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our King; which had return’d
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as by the same cov’nant
And carriage of the article design’d,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved 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 post-haste and rummage in the land. The son of the King of Norway who lost his life to Hamlet the Dane has raised an army and plans to try and retake the lands his father lost. This is the reason why they are preparing for war. Fortinbras, although unproven, is decisive. . Another clue that the ghost is an omen of the coming war with Fortinbras; who is likely to try and recapture the lands lost by his father: the old way. You pay for blood spilt by spilling some yourself. You kill the person who killed your family member in revenge but it is not justice.

BARNARDO.
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, Comparison with Julius Caesar who was also murdered and died an unnatural death by “traitors” There were omens before his death too.
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, All these were omens of a leaders death but is the Ghost an omen of Claudius’ impending death rather than the Dane’s since he is already dead. It also could be an omen of Hamlet’s impending death.
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce 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.

Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft, behold! Lo, where it comes again!
I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me.
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!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it. Stay, and speak! If you know of some great calamity that will befall us or Denmark or know of a treasure, tell us about it

[The cock crows.]

Stop it, Marcellus!

MARCELLUS.
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO.
Do, if it will not stand.

BARNARDO.
’Tis here!

HORATIO.
’Tis here!

[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.

BARNARDO.
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 his 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. Nothing evil can walk the earth in the light of day because God will see it and smite the crap out of it. 

MARCELLUS.
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Christian superstition that nothing evil shall walk the earth the week of Christ’s birth? Establishes that Denmark is a Christian nation and Horatio, Marcellus and Barnardo as highly superstitious.
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time. Christmas time

HORATIO.
So have I heard, and do in part believe it. Educated Horatio only half believes 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? They see an extraordinary thing and immediately go to tell a member of the royal family, mirror of the sentries’ actions after seeing the signal fire from Troy. The sentry immediately goes to tell Clytemnestra.

MARCELLUS.
Let’s do’t, I pray, and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.

[Exeunt.]

Extraordinary sight of Signal fire from Troy mirrors the extraordinary sight of the Ghost

The Ghost is:

a.       Omen of possible  war with young Fortinbras(Chances are he’s going to want the lands lost by his father back and will one come to take them back)

b.       Spirit returned from purgatory by divine permission

c.        Spirit returned from the grave to perform a deed that was not accomplished before death; the finding of one’s murderer perhaps or a treasure, a lost will etc.

d.       A devil disguised as a dead person to lure a pious man into doing some great evil so that Satan can lay claim to his soul and the country he rules like Henry VIII being declared a heretic by the pope…i.e. Faustus and Mephistopheles

e.        All of the above depending on where you are in the story.

f.         A fantasy or illusion. (Hamlet is haunted by the memory of his father and his desire to live up to his father’s expectations but the ghost is not real) Dispelled by the fact that more than one person sees it. Do they really see it or are they pretending to and catering to the whims of a future king. Mass hysteria.

The Ghost haunts Hamlet as Electra is haunted by Agamemnon