MARCELLUS
He could hear someone calling out "Who's there?" as a challenge to Francisco, whose watch was ending. Marcellus could see them dimly through the roiling fog.
"Nay, answer me," Francisco called back. "Stand and unfold yourself."
"Long live the King," the other replied.
"Barnardo?" Francisco asked, and Barnardo replied, "He."
"You come most carefully upon your hour," Francisco said. Marcellus sensed the reproof in his voice. No one wanted to stand watch on the Elsinore battlements any longer than necessary these nights.
For his part, Barnardo was unwilling to concede any lateness. "'Tis now struck twelve," he said. "Get thee to bed, Francisco."
"For this relief much thanks," Francisco said, as if apologizing for his brusqueness. "'Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart."
"Have you had quiet guard?"
"Not a mouse stirring," Francisco said, the relief apparent in his voice.
"Well, good night. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, the rivals of my watch, bid them make haste."
"I think I hear them," Francisco said. "Stand ho, who is there?"
"Friends to this ground," Horatio called out the passwords Marcellus had given him, and Marcellus added, "And liegemen to the Dane."
As Marcellus and Horatio approached, two more guardsmen who had shared the watch with Francisco also appeared. "Give you goodnight," Francisco said to them.
"O farewell, honest soldiers," Marcellus said to them, then turned to Francisco and asked, "Who hath relieved you?"
"Barnardo hath my place," he replied, and with a "Give you goodnight," he swiftly disappeared into the fog.
"Holla, Barnardo!" Marcellus called out.
"Say, what, is Horatio there?" Barnardo asked.
"A piece of him," Horatio said, extending his hand.
Marcellus knew how Horatio must feel on this dark, cold height, with the sound of the waves far below adding to the loneliness and melancholy. For a moment he regretted summoning Horatio from his studies in Wittenberg. But it had been necessary: Horatio was Prince Hamlet's closest friend. He had told Horatio only that strange things were happening at Elsinore, and that he was worried about the prince. Horatio had come as soon as he could, arriving only that afternoon, and had followed Marcellus's instructions not to meet with anyone else. He had insisted that Horatio join him on the night watch, explaining that he and others had seen something that he wanted Horatio to witness. He gave only some more vague details: It was a figure, a shape of some sort, that appeared out of the fog. He wanted Horatio's experience to corroborate his own.
"Welcome Horatio, welcome good Marcellus," said Barnardo, and he embraced both of them.
"What, has this ... thing appeared again tonight?" Horatio said, a kind of nervous jocularity in his voice.
"I have seen nothing," Barnardo said, though on the other hand, he had just arrived.
"Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy," Marcellus said, a bit crossly, "and will not let belief take hold of him touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us." Barnardo nodded, reinforcing Marcellus's assertion. "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."
"Tush, tush, 'twill not appear," Horatio said, though there was a tremor in his voice that undermined his show of confidence.
Barnardo led Horatio aside. "Sit down awhile," he said, motioning Horatio to a low stone bench, "and let us once again assail your ears that are so fortified against our story what we have two nights seen."
"Well, sit we down," Horatio said, with a somewhat forced cheerfulness, "and let us hear Barnardo speak of this."
"Last night of all," Barnardo began, "when yond same star that's westward from the pole" -- he pointed at a clearing in the fog -- "had made his course t'illume that part of heaven where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, the bell then beating one --" He suddenly stopped, giving a gasp of surprise.
"Peace, break thee off," Marcellus said. "Look where it comes again." He felt a sudden chill that seemed to come from deep within himself, and he shuddered. Something was emerging from the fog, almost as if the fog had resolved itself into this figure of a man in armor.
"In the same figure like the King that's dead," Barnardo whispered in an awe-struck voice.
Perhaps Horatio knows some Latin incantation or some spell that would draw information from the apparition, Marcellus thought. "Thou art a scholar -- speak to it, Horatio," he urged.
"Looks 'a not like the King?" Barnardo insisted. "Mark it, Horatio."
"Most like," Horatio stammered. He held on to Barnardo for support. "It harrows me with fear and wonder."
The figure looked at them with an air of command.
"It would be spoke to," Barnardo said, and Marcellus urged, "Speak to it, Horatio."
"What art thou," Horatio began uncertainly, rising to his feet a bit unsteadily, "that usurp'st this time of night together with that fair and warlike form in which the majesty of buried Denmark did sometimes march?" And with more assurance in his voice, he said, loudly, "By heaven, I charge thee speak."
But that seemed to be the wrong tactic. "It is offended," Marcellus said. "See, it stalks away," Barnardo said as Horatio cried out, "Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak." But the figure dissolved into the night and fog.
"'Tis gone and will not answer," Marcellus said. He didn't know whether he was disappointed or relieved. At least Horatio had seen it and could now tell the prince that the ghost of his father had been appearing on the Elsinore battlements.
"How now, Horatio," said Barnard, a bit mockingly, "you tremble and look pale. Is this not something more than fantasy? What think you on't?"
Somewhat abashed, remembering his previous skepticism, Horatio admitted, "Before my God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes."
"Is it not like the King?" Marcellus urged.
"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 Polacks on the ice." He shook his head. "'Tis strange."
"Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, with martial stalk hath he gone by our watch," Marcellus said, feeling vindicated in his decision to summon Horatio's aid.
"In what particular thought to work, I know not," Horatio said, "but in the gross and scope of mine opinion this bodes some strange eruption to our state."
Marcellus agreed. It must be some kind of portent -- but of what? Denmark had been busy with military preparations for some time now -- even the watch that he was standing now was staffed by new recruits, doubling its strength. "Good now, sit down," Marcellus urged Horatio, "and tell me he that knows why this same strict and most observant watch so nightly toils the subject of the land, and with such daily cost 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 nodded. "That can I," he said. "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 him) did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact well ratified by law and heraldry did forfeit with his life all these his lands which he stood seized of to the conqueror; against the which a moiety competent was gaged by our King, which had return to the inheritance of Fortinbras had he been vanquisher, as by the same co-mart and carriage of the article design his fell to Hamlet."
This was somewhat more legalese and historical erudition than Marcellus had bargained for, but Horatio was, as he had said, a scholar.
Horatio continued, "Now, sir, young Fortinbras, of unimproved mettle, hot and full, hath in the skirts of Norway here and there sharked 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." Marcellus nodded in understanding, though he exchanged a glance of impatience with Barnardo. "And this, I take it," Horatio said, "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."
"I think it be no other but e'en so," Barnardo spoke up. "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."
"A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye," Horatio mused. Then a historical parallel occurred to him: "In the most high and palmy state of Rome a little before the mightiest Julius fell the graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; at 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."
Marcellus was pondering this historical parallel when he was seized again by the chill that had grasped him at the ghost's earlier appearance. And sure enough, it was emerging once again through the fog.
"But soft, behold, lo where it comes again," Horatio said. He stood and confronted the figure. "I'll cross it though it blast me. Stay, illusion," he commanded.
The apparition spread its arms as if to bar his way, but Horatio stood his ground. "Speak to me," he urged. "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." The ghost remained silent. "Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life extorted treasure in the womb of earth -- for which they say your spirits oft walk in death -- speak of it, stay and speak."
Somewhere within the castle a rooster had awakened and gave out a crow. The ghost began to retreat, to fade back into the mist.
"Stop it, Marcellus!" Horatio urged.
How do you stop a ghost? Marcellus wondered. "Shall I strike it with my partisan?"
"Do," Horatio said impatiently, "if it will not stand."
Suddenly the ghost seemed to be in several places at once. "'Tis here," Barnardo called out, and Horatio insisted, "'Tis here."
"'Tis gone," Marcellus said. And it had indeed vanished. "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."
"It was about to speak when the cock crew," Barnardo observed.
"And then it started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons," Horatio said, dejectedly. "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."
"It faded on the crowing of the cock," Marcellus said, surprised that the night had gone by so swiftly. Had time somehow sped up while the ghost was there? He recalled an old legend. "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 dare stir abroad, the nights are wholesome, then no planet strikes, nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and gracious is that time."
"So I have heard, and I do in part believe it," Horatio said. "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?"
"Let's do't, I pray," Marcellus replied. "And I this morning know where we shall find him most convenient."
No comments:
Post a Comment