The sentinels see the Ghost

Scene summary

On the battlements of Elsinore castle, at midnight, Bernardo arrives to relieve the guard Francisco, who thanks him and says he is sick at heart. Bernardo asks that Horatio and Marcellus, his fellow guards, hurry. Horatio is a scholar who does not believe in the apparition that Marcellus and Bernardo have already seen twice, and whom he calls a fantasy. Marcellus invited him to keep watch with them at night, so that if the ghost returns, Horatio will confirm it and speak to it.

Marcellus cries that the apparition has returned, and the Ghost appears, with the face and armor of the dead king, father of Prince Hamlet. The soldiers order the scholar to speak, and Horatio begs, in heaven’s name, that it answer, but the ghost moves away without saying anything. Horatio, pale, admits that he would not have believed without seeing it with his own eyes: it is the armor the king wore when he won against the king of Norway and the look he had when he defeated the Poles on the ice. He says the vision is a bad sign for the State.

Marcellus asks why there is a strict watch every night, the daily casting of cannon and the preparations for war. Horatio explains that the dead king defeated in combat King Fortinbras of Norway, who had provoked him, and kept the lands the Norwegian had lost. Now young Fortinbras, the son of the defeated man, has gathered adventurers on the borders to take them back by force, and that is the reason for the preparations. Horatio recalls that in Rome, before the death of Julius Caesar, there were dead in the streets and signs in the sky, like announcements of disaster. The ghost returns, and Horatio asks it to speak, if there is something to be done for the homeland or if it hid a treasure, but a cock crows and it vanishes. Horatio decides to tell everything to young Hamlet, betting that the spirit, mute to them, will speak to the son, and Marcellus says he knows where to find the prince in the morning.