Hamlet; the Noir Adaption 2023 Act 1 Scene 5 Sub-scene 1

 Act One Scene Five

Sub-Scene One

The dead and the living

If one was expecting a scene from Dante’s Inferno, of the fiery hades and fleeting demons on wings that will stab at the souls with its spear, well, there will be disappointment there. The scene that Hamlet was subjected to is a series of the ghost apparition moving along the wall sometimes for a length of a few seconds and then nothing.

“Where art thou?’ Hamlet will be calling out with his feet treading over the uneven ground/ He was past the gravel road into the woods, but never far from the moat to the wall. He almost tripped on the roots and if not careful would have fallen into the moat.

“I am here.” Finally, the ghost spoke as it appeared a distance away. Hamlet made his way there and looked around. He was by the wall but to the darker side of the castle walls.

“Mark me.” The ghost called out when Hamlet closed the distance. “My hour almost comes when I to submit to the sulfurous and tormenting flames. I must render up myself.”

“I can’t help you but sympathize with you/” Hamlet stood there. He was relieved that the ghost could speak then. “Speak. I am bound to hear.”

“So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.” The ghost voiced out.

“What? I will be the one to judge then.” Hamlet laid out his terms.

“So be it. I am thy father’s spirit,” The ghost voiced out. Hamlet shuddered in the cold air, with the muscles of his frame stiff from the ghost speaking of its identity. “Thy father speaks here.”

“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 forbidden to tell the secrets of my prison house.”

“I could tell a tale unfold whose lightest word that would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.” The ghost continued with its voice hoarse yet heard by Hamlet.

“Were you undone by foul deeds?” Hamlet asked. “Was it sad?”

“Murder most foul, as in the best it is but this foulest, strange and unnatural.” The Ghost replied.

“Haste me to know it, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.” Hamlet said valiantly.

“I find thee apt, and duller shouldst thou is than the fat weed that roots itself in ease on the wharf wouldst thou not stir in this.” The ghost spoke. “Now, Hamlet, hear this given out that, sleeping in my orchard, a serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark is by a forgèd process of my death rankly abused.”

“But know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown.”

“That …prophetic soul who is my uncle/” Hamlet uttered out in anger. “I should have known.”

“Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts.” The ghost added. “O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!—won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.”

“O Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity that it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline, upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine.” The ghost moaned in grief.

“But virtue, as it never will be moved, though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven. So, lust, though to a radiant angel linked, Will sate itself in a celestial bed And prey on garbage. But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.” The ghost describes his last hour. 

“Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, my custom always of the afternoon. Upon my secure hour, thy uncle stole, with the juice of cursèd hebona (poisonous plant extract) in a vial, and in the porches of my ears did pour the leprous distilled, whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man. That swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body and with a sudden vigor it doth posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood.”

“So did it mine, And a most instant tetter barked about, most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust all my smooth body.” The ghost mimicked the sleeping posture and awakened with a jolt.

“Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand of life, of the crown, of the queen at once dispatched, cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin, unhoused, disappointed, unaneled, no reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head.”

What Hamlet heard was like the drop of the curtain to a bad play and an unsatiated audience. It was the ultimate bane to any act.

“O horrible, O horrible, most horrible! If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not. Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damnèd incest, he whom I considered as my brother in blood. But, howsoever thou pursues this act, taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught.” The King had loved his mother and spoken of it many times to the Prince to love his.

“Leave her to heaven and those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her.” The King faults not his lover too. “Fare thee well at once.”

“The glowworm shows the matin to be near and gins to pale his uneffectual fire.” The ghost looked at the breaking sunrise. “Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.”

The ghost apparition fades.