The Elsinore Follies a play in two acts by Bill Warnock (c) Bill Warnock 1997 40 Mount Street,Perth Western Australia 6000 Telephone: (08) 9321 9152 Facsimile: (08) 9324 1512 email: warnock@wantree.com.au CAST GRAVEDIGGER, a ragged trousered philosopher. PLAYER KING, a passing thespian. QUEEN GERTRUDE, a mature woman. OPHELIA, a skeptical maid. KING CLAUDIUS and a GHOST: (double) a monarch, and his late brother. HAMLET and OSRIC: (double) a mad nobleman, and a courtier. POLONIUS , an old fool LAERTES: and his son, a hypocrite. SETTING: the graveyard of Elsinore castle (c) 1997 Bill Warnock 40 Mount Street Perth Western Australia 6000 Tel: (09) 321 9152 Fax: (09) 324 1512 March 24th 1997 REGISTERED WGAe NO._____________ The Elsinore Follies Act 1. Scene 1. BLACK. There comes the sound of a tormented, sepulchral voice as from beyond the grave. GHOST: Remember me..... Remember me.... The voice dies away, hopelessly. A flourish of trumpets. Lights. A graveyard. An open, half-dug grave. Behind rises the sheer wall of a castle, Elsinore. Waist-deep in the grave, a GRAVEDIGGER is digging out a fresh grave. He is youngish, but not so young as to lack experience. What happens around him never surprises him, although occasionally, it worries him. He digs very slowly, not doing much more than shuffling soil, awaiting upon events. GRAVEDIGGER: 'The grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.' He is amused by his quotation. GRAVEDIGGER: Marvell-ous couplet that - but as sentiment's go - naive. Clearly, whoever wrote it, never worked in a graveyard in his life. He digs on. GRAVEDIGGER: You would be astonished what goes on here. He shakes his head in disbelief. GRAVEDIGGER: Astonished. That's what keeps me going - the interest. The things that happen in graveyards you would simply not believe. I mean, there's nothing much to the work. It's not exactly an intellectual challenge. A strongish back, a sharpish spade and enough sense not to choose a spot that's already occupied. The holes come in one basic model..so wide..by so long..by so deep.. He indicates the proportions. You dig them. Fate inevitably supplies a tenant. You fill them in. You start again. Oh, I have dreams... ambitions.. He digs on. ... but in these uncertain times..this..is steady work. Intermittent, I grant you, but, in the the long run, steady. Enter, with maximum furtiveness, Osric, a courtier. He is a florid, mincing fellow. The Gravedigger sees him and ducks down out of sight. Osric checks all points of the compass, comes near to the grave and picks up the skull. Looking all around, he draws a sealed paper from his doublet. He stuffs it inside the skull. He checks the surroundings once more, then minces off whistling - the innocent passer-by. The Gravedigger scrambles out of the grave and, after checking Osric is gone, he picks up the skull. He pulls out the paper. Slips the band off it and unrolls it. He reads it. GRAVEDIGGER: ..'a death by drowning..a wager of barbary steeds.....a pass at arms...hemlock and envenomed swords.?' He holds the paper at fingertip length as though it might explode. GRAVEDIGGER: I don't think I wish to know this. ...stuffs it back into the skull and drops it into the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: Elsinore. The very air is thick with intrigue. What schemes, plots and stratagems unwind? I'll only know when Denmark strangles in their coils. What crafty speeches are being mouthed there? What deadly high dramas unfold behind those basilisk walls? I'll not hear a word of them. No one ever tells me. I depend, for anything I come to know, on those most awkward of social occasions... funerals. Beside the grave I pick up the muttered curse of a mourner; the bitter comment of a seeming grief- stricken lover; the two-way-facing platitude of a courtier. Then I piece together, draw inferences, add two and two, extrapolate, make inspired leaps in the dark, jump to conclusions, follow hunches, go down blind alleys, make suppositions - try to make sense of it all. But, in the end - no substance, only shadow...I do not get to speak the lines I would aspire to speak.. At best, I'm a bit player. If this (encompasses graveyard) is my stage, then all intrigues personal, determinations political, conspiracies sexual - all happen 'off'. It's as if I stand on a platform anchored off the turning world, not involved in events, not affecting to the slightest degree what is really going on. GRAVEDIGGER: I deal only in outcomes. But (more cheerful) ...the point about outcomes is their dependability. They invariably happen. There is no known case of any action not resulting in an outcome. So, here in Elsinore - since outcomes are usually fatal - there's profit in them. I get to plant.... outcomes. And right now, I am prepared. Already I've dug more waiting holes in this hallowed ground than there is in a Switzer cheeese. Enter a QUEEN. She walks about slowly, distracted by her thoughts. The Gravedigger encompasses the Queen and the open grave. GRAVEDIGGER: This one's for her. How do I know? Well, I try to anticipate events, don't I? It spreads the workload. With experience, you develop a sensitivity to the ...ambience... Right now...signs and portents... Stars with trains of fire.. cocks crowing out of joint at the wolf's hour, and where the brave captains stand these freezing nights on Elsinore's high battlements, there, watching out for young Fortinbras , they see not his band of lawless Norsemen, but ghosts walking. He taps his nose. GRAVEDIGGER: There's a period of high demand coming on. Mark my words. He scrambles out of the grave. The Queen comes nearer, still unaware of him. QUEEN: (outraged) Not go to his bed?! Not go! GRAVEDIGGER: (confidentially) She thinks a lot about beds... this mare. And being bedded. So they say. (to the Queen) Ma'am. She ignores him QUEEN: To go, or not to go....the question. But how could I not go towards those beguiling 'incestuous' sheets, as he so unkindly calls them? For god's sake, that boy has no understanding about anything! GRAVEDIGGER: The seeming-virtuous Queen. The word is that everyone gets her just desserts...and there's few who've 'scaped.... tupping. The Queen notices the grave for the first time. QUEEN; Who's grave is this? GRAVEDIGGER: Yours, Ma'am. The information does not register. QUEEN: Do you have sons, Gravedigger? GRAVEDIGGER: None I know of, Ma'am. QUEEN: Don't have them. GRAVEDIGGER: No, Ma'am. I mean, yes, Ma'am. QUEEN: Ungrateful, impertinent wretches. Judiciously, the Gravedigger says nothing.. QUEEN: He's running about the battlements in the middle of the night, raving on about his father. 'Hyperion' he calls him! She laughs in disbelief. QUEEN: God, if only he knew! GRAVEDIGGER: Knew what, Ma'am? QUEEN: That his father was, quite frankly, inadequate! Why do you think the boy's an only child? GRAVEDIGGER: I have no idea, Ma'am. QUEEN: Once! Just the once, he managed the trick. GRAVEDIGGER: (astounded) Just the once, Ma'am? QUEEN: Once. And a pretty unimpressive weapon he brought to that encounter. GRAVEDIGGER: Looks belie then, Ma'am. He cut a fine figure of a man. Mind you, I only saw him at his .....ripest...when I buried him. He indicates the grave. But he laid out most handsomely. QUEEN: I'll admit the outward trappings were splendid.....the eye like Mars, the Hyperion curls. You can understand the boy growing up hero-worshipping. If only he'd known his feeble beginnings! GRAVEDIGGER: An unimpressive weapon on a king? We are led to believe kingly proportions are invariably legendary. QUEEN: Necessary propaganda, believe me. GRAVEDIGGER: Somehow, it doesn't seem.... fitting. QUEEN: A very small fitting. Miniscule, in fact. She clasps her bosom, passionately. QUEEN: Not at all like his brother. She sucks in her breath at the thought of him. QUEEN: Now there's a man for you! No mincing Hyperion he, but a veritable satyr! GRAVEDIGGER: Performance-wise? QUEEN: Exactly. She considers him or the first time. QUEEN: None you know of? you said. GRAVEDIGGER: Ma'am? QUEEN: Sons. GRAVEDIGGER: (uncomfortable) Ah... QUEEN: None? The Gravedigger shrugs. But there could have been sons? The Gravedigger says nothing. The Queen considers him for a moment. She gestures towards her crown. QUEEN: You're not one of us, are you? She cocks her wrist. GRAVEDIGGER: (outraged) No! We are certainly not! QUEEN: So, there's a chance, etcetera etcetera..of sons? GRAVEDIGGER: (No false modesty now) Certainly, Ma'am. More than a chance, in fact. QUEEN: (savouring to herself) A gravedigger, eh? The Gravedigger, alarmed by the turn of events, turns a sod or two around the edge of the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: If I'm not careful, this.. ..indicates the grave.. .....could well be mine. QUEEN: It's the impertinence that rankles, Gravedigger. You bring them up to have manners; to conduct themselves without embarrassing you. You don't expect them to barge into your bedroom speaking daggers at you. Giving me lectures about morality. His own mother! 'Go not to mine uncle's bed' ! GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) The 'uncle's bed' does raise certain tricky moral issues. QUEEN: It's easy for him to make such suggestions. I mean, Gravedigger, you're a man..you will understand these things... ....considering him with interest.. QUEEN:(aside) and not at all an uncomely specimen. The Gravedigger is made uncomfortable by this. QUEEN: You'll agree that one can't just turn it off and on like a spigot, can one? GRAVEDIGGER: 'It', Ma'am? QUEEN: Desire, Gravedigger. GRAVEDIGGER: (uneasy) Not like a spigot. Not desire. QUEEN: And the odd, insulting idea he has that people of my age are past it. 'You cannot call it 'love'', he says, 'for at your age, the heyday in the blood is tame.' At my age! Tame?! Why, at a touch, my every pore transpires with the very ecstasy of love. She catches the Gravedigger's hand. An how can he have any idea of what his 'aged' uncle is like.....honeying. She catches her breath. ...'twixt those sheets. GRAVEDIGGER: Incestuous sheets, 'Ma'am. QUEEN: I grant you...incestuous. Which adds a certain... GRAVEDIGGER: Je ne sais quois, Ma'am? She considers him with some surprise. QUEEN: Exactly.... (aside) A gravedigger with French? (to the Gravedigger) But the honeying..sirrah... Now there's a sweetness to conjure with! GRAVEDIGGER: (gingerly) Honeying, Ma'am? QUEEN: Aye, there's no other word for it! The man is deliciously insatiable and, I may report, hung like veritable stallion. The heyday of his blood isn't tame, let me tell you! She considers him carefully, head to toe. You, Gravedigger, are older than the Prince by what? Ten years? GRAVEDIGGER: Give, or take, Ma'am. QUEEN: Is the heyday of your blood tame? The Gravedigger is nervous. He says nothing. He tries, gently, to remove his hand. She holds on. QUEEN: Are you past it? GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Actually, right now ....adjusting the front of his trousers... ...it could cost her a groaning to take off my edge. But ... enough! We're moving into seriously dangerous country here. QUEEN:(catching both his hands, causing him to drop his spade) Are you, Gravedigger, ...past it? The Gravedigger looks around, frantically. GRAVEDIGGER: Given the right circumstances, Ma'am - no. More time, perhaps, to do justice to the moment. A more appropriate place... (aside)... preferably not in full view of the palace walls.. The Queen runs a finger down the Gravedigger's chest. QUEEN: You remind me somewhat of my son, the Prince. GRAVEDIGGER: (deep alarm) Surely not the Prince, Ma'am.. the very glass of fashion, the mould of form? QUEEN: Yes, even he.... ..running her hand over his body..ever downward... (aside) Beneath these rags..the same manly carriage..the same sensuous grace! (to the Gravedigger) So often I have looked at my lovely Prince, wishing... wishing..that things had been otherwise... that I had not been his mother. He's wasted on that simpering child he tumbles night and morning, from one end of the Palace to the other.. GRAVEDIGGER: From one end? QUEEN: To the other. There's not a room in the castIe I dare now enter for fear of finding her..with my poor, night-mantled son... (outrage/envy)....paddling. GRAVEDIGGER: Paddling, Ma'am? QUEEN: Aye, paddling like some drab. GRAVEDIGGER: Not one room? QUEEN: Not a one. There's not a gap behind any arras in any room in the castle; not a corner behind any screen; not a space under any bed I peer into that I do not find her with my poor, inky-cloaked son. (disgust/envy)..cloying. GRAVEDIGGER: Cloying, Ma'am? QUEEN: (warming to the task) Aye, cloying. GRAVEDIGGER: Not one place? QUEEN: Not one. There's not a nook, not a cranny, not a niche, not a cupboard, not a closet, not a pantry, not a trunk, not a linen press I open up in any room in the castle, but I find her there with my poor black-enveloped son..... GRAVEDIGGER: Boxes, Ma'am? QUEEN: Boxes? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, Ma'am. Do you look in boxes? QUEEN: Of course I look in boxes! GRAVEDIGGER: And? QUEEN: There they are... GRAVEDIGGER: Honeying Ma'am? QUEEN: (sour ) Aye, what else? Honeying! She siezes the Gravedigger's head... QUEEN: She, with my son! That beautiful boy! There are times, Gravedigger, when it is only by a supreme act of will that I keep my hands off his strong... She kisses the Gravedigger, passionately.. ..strong... She slides slowly downwards through his arms into the open grave... ...manly.. ..dragging the Gravedigger down after her.. QUEEN: ..body... ...into the grave... He looks around desperately, but is lost. Inexorably, he is drawn down out of sight his eyes wide with fright....mixed with a certain interest.... TO BLACK. Act 1. Scene 2. The graveyard, deserted. From the grave rises the Gravedigger, deshabille. He looks around him, nervously. Pulls on his shirt. GRAVEDIGGER: It's becoming more obvious by the minute. Lust is the principal problem here in Elsinore. He scrambles out of the grave and hastily dons his breeches. The hanging prospect of being caught..in flagrente..with the Queen, may wonderfully concentrate the mind, but it threatens, mightily, to unman the body... He shrugs, pleased with himself. GRAVEDIGGER: Although, in the end, I performed well enough. I had no Royal complaint . (sly) It was, indeed, a consummation most devoutly to be wished. He breathes in and out, heavily, shakes his head, stunned by the experience. A remarkable woman! He picks up his spade and moves some soil about. GRAVEDIGGER: But, mark my words, lust will bring them all down, here. Whatever it is that's going on, take a wager on it...it will be about lust. The problem with these royal parasites is boredom. They have nothing else to do. The odd skirmish on the ice against the Polacks...diplomatic posturings with neighbour States..But, apart from that, nothing. It's all heavy-handed revel, East and West; drunkenness... and lust. Right now, they're keeping one bleary eye on ambitious young Fortinbras passing through - so he claims - on his way to smite the Poles - him with one eye on the main territorial chance. The whisper goes that he's on Denmark's skirts to recover the lands lost by his late father. And this lot are so besotted with lust, that they believe him.... (laughs) ...and give him license to cross flat, stale Denmark. There could be some profit in that.... for a gravedigger. Enter LAERTES, anguished. He invented vanity. LAERTES: Oh, faithless Gertrude! GRAVEDIGGER: (panic-stricken) Laertes! Here? LAERTES: She promises to be true, but I know she betrays me. GRAVEDIGGER: I'm undone! (now, indignant) Kissing and telling by Queens really is unforgivable! LAERTES: I doubt there's a man within the castle walls who had not enjoyed her favours. GRAVEDIGGER: (without thinking) ...within, or without... LAERTES: (sees the Gravedigger) I beg your pardon? (deeply suspicious) GRAVEDIGGER: I said, 'On such a nice day, it is better to be in than out.' LAERTES: (musing) I mean, I don't mind her official 'bit on the side' - the newly crowned king - but gardeners and stableboys? Ostlers, knifegrinders, mountebanks, passing players and assorted peasants? GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Not to mention gravediggers. But, steady, this could prove awkward, yet. LAERTES: The problem in Elsinore is.. GRAVEDIGGER: ...lust.. Laertes is impressed by this insight. LAERTES: (aside) A philosopher gravedigger, already? He gestures towards the grave. Whose grave is this? GRAVEDIGGER: Yours, sir. Laertes makes no response to this information. LAERTES: My sister is at risk. GRAVEDIGGER: Lust, Sir? LAERTES: A Prince's lust. GRAVEDIGGER: The very worst kind. LAERTES: Exactly. He tenders many affections to her, but I'm convinced he seeks only to breach her chaste treasure. GRAVEDIGGER: (genuinely puzzled) Pardon me? 'Chaste treasure'? LAERTES: You know...(gesturing crutchwards) GRAVEDIGGER: Ah! Of course! 'Chaste treasure'. Very delicate. LAERTES: You think so? GRAVEDIGGER: In the best of good taste. Laertes is pleased. GRAVEDIGGER: And you, sir -(aside) like some ungracious pastor - (to Laertes) seek to show her the steep and thorny path to heaven? LAERTES: I do. I know Hamlet too well, you see. In our recent hot youth, many's a maid we've jointly shown the primrose path to dalliance. Extremely pleased with himself. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Word has it that, within Norway's borders, not a housemaid, boy, nor goat is safe from this one. LAERTES: With my chaste sister, I trust him not. GRAVEDIGGER: Lust is clearly your problem here, sir... The control of. Laertes stares at him, blankly. A beat, then he walks away in a circle, suddenly distracted. LAERTES: O frailty! O Gertrude! He returns. LAERTES: Gravedigger, no good will come from the fresh marriage of this hot queen. Why? O why did she do it?! She had it all. She should have been content enough with her previous king. He was no cocksman, that's certain, but he gave her rank, privilege, status. And she had ....me... for sweet distraction. Very pleased with himself. GRAVEDIGGER: You, sir? LAERTES: Aye, me. And I am known for the excellence of my weapon... LAERTES: (nudge, wink) rapier and dagger. GRAVEDIGGER: That's two weapons, sir. Laertes stares at him, blankly. A beat. LAERTES: To quench her all-consuming fires I could offer her the hot, inexhaustible blood of my lovely youth. GRAVEDIGGER: And even that wasn't enough? The sarcasm is lost on Laertes. LAERTES: Amazingly, no! For a time, certainly, my legendary passion seemed to dampen down the furnace of her desires. But then, unhappily, no longer. There is no satisfying the woman. GRAVEDIGGER: (unthinking) I agree. A remarkable lady. Laertes stares at him, suddenly suspicious. GRAVEDIGGER: (retrieving) I mean..I gather..from what you tell me...must be..remarkable.. LAERTES: (mollified) She is. Oh, Gravedigger, one of such lowly station as you cannot imagine what it is like to 'honey' with a Queen. GRAVEDIGGER: To 'honey', sir? LAERTES: There's no other word for it. GRAVEDIGGER: No, I cannot. LAERTES: Cannot what? GRAVEDIGGER: Imagine, sir...'Honeying' with a Queen. He looks innocently forward. LAERTES; It's like nothing else. A cliff edge.. The Gravedigger nods, forward. LAERTES: A hurricano.. The Gravedigger nods. LAERTES: A dicing with volcanic fire! The Gravedigger nods, now agreeing whole- heartedly. GRAVEDIGGER: I agree...absolutely. LAERTES: (pouncing) On what basis do you agree? GRAVEDIGGER: (nervous) Your testimonial, sire, my lord, your excellency, your eminence. The very richness, colour and texture of your description persuades me as if I, myself had....had... LAERTES: Honeyed? GRAVEDIGGER: Oh, no, sir....Not me, not 'honeyed'...not a gravedigger..lowly station, that kind of thing...not with a Queen. Laertes undergoes long moment of deep suspicion. LAERTES: (musing) I fear the King's present choler, and like not the uneasy feeling at court. Fortinbras, who has reason to hate us - after all, Hamlet slew his father - is out there, someplace, smelling that Denmark is weak and out of joint. It's as well I return to Paris on the morrow. GRAVEDIGGER: To study, Sir? LAERTES: Aye, study most assiduously..French. French maidenheads! He laughs long and heartily at his own joke. The Gravedigger is unimpressed. LAERTES:(suddenly serious) But I carry my worries with me, Gravedigger. One. Will my sister save her besieged innocence? The Gravedigger looks forward, blank; likely not. Two. Will Gertrude, my honeyed Queen, be faithful? The Gravedigger looks forward, blank; obviously not. Three. Will her new husband king plot and scheme and bring us all down into this...fresh prepared grave? The Gravedigger nods emphatically. It's a worry. GRAVEDIGGER: Actually, that's three worries, sir. Laertes stares at him, blankly. Is he taking the piss? LAERTES: Farewell! He strides off, looking worried, hand on head. O frailty! O Gertrude! The Gravedigger, aping Laertes perfectly, crosses after him. GRAVEDIGGER: O frailty! O bollocks! The Gravedigger stops and looks after Laertes. GRAVEDIGGER: (disbelief) 'Chaste treasure'? He gives a wild neigh of laughter and resumes digging....giggling to himself. GRAVEDIGGER: All the same, as euphemisms go, 'chaste treasure' is terribly good. PLAYER KING:(voice off) 'In second husband let me be accursed' The Gravedigger drives his spade into the earthpile and smiles broadly. Enter the PLAYER KING, downcast, reading contemptuously from a paper. His style is declamatory, histrionic throughout. PLAYER KING: 'None wed the second, but who killed the first' de -dum, de-dum, de-dum, I'm supposed to learn this doggerel? GRAVEDIGGER: Where is the painted smile of yesteryear? where the robustious gesture, my periwigged friend? This is not like you..a soft entrance?! PLAYER KING: It's this soft neck'll receive the axe, Old Destiny! The Player King hands the Gravedigger the wineflask he is carrying. They embrace joyfully. The Player King slaps the paper. ...and this dozen lines - that rhyme abominably and barely scan- that might lead this noble head to the block! But, first, a small refreshment. He uncorks the flask and takes a formidable pull. Hands it to the Gravedigger, who matches him. PLAYER KING: By the bowels of Noah! It's good to see you once more! GRAVEDIGGER: From whence come you? PLAYER KING: From fair Norway. (his fingers to his lips, mysterious.) After which, this rank and unweeded Denmark of yours, is a falling off, let me tell you. He puts his arm conspiratorially around the shoulder of the Gravedigger. PLAYER KING: 'Can you play 'The Murder of Gonzago''? the Prince says, all innocent. 'Aye', says I. 'We do Gonzago ' - a worthy piece full of slimy Italian intrigue - but sweetly embellished with some handsomely convoluted rhyme schemes that I speak most fairly - matter, sadly, far from the dumb shows the groundlings applaud. 'Could you,' he says, butter not melting in his mouth, 'study a speech of some dozen, or sixteen lines that I would set down - and insert it in the play tomorrow night in front of the King? Strikes his chest, pitifully.. PLAYER KING: This innocent.. This babe in the darkling wood.. This pawn of the Fates.. GRAVEDIGGER: This cork on the catspaw current? PLAYER KING: 'Cork on the catspaw current'? Very good! I'll use that.. GRAVEDIGGER: You're welcome. PLAYER KING: Thank you. Aye, says I. Aye! I'm barely inside the castle gates - know nothing of the present intrigues - and I'm saying 'Aye !? Hecuba would weep to see me this foolish! GRAVEDIGGER: Princes are devilish hard to refuse. PLAYER KING: This.. my friend... is not the gentle Elsinore of old. GRAVEDIGGER: Indeed. PLAYER KING: Something here in Denmark's state is ...off...not right.... What's the word I'm groping for? GRAVEDIGGER: Rotten? PLAYER KING: (impressed) 'Rotten' is good! You have a feeling for words. Have you thought of writing? GRAVEDIGGER: Is it steady employment? PLAYER KING: Ah...(diminishing enthusiasm) ..no. More intermittent than steady. GRAVEDIGGER: And, it would seem, more dangerous than gravedigging... Holds up his shovel. PLAYER KING: Presently so. This Prince's scribblings, methinks, contain a deeper purpose. The Gravedigger nods, emphatically. But, a Prince's lines must be mouthed. The Player King considers the prospect, worried. To add insult to injury, he says: 'Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue.' (reads, contemptuous) 'So think thou will no second husband wed But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.' Speak this stuff 'trippingly' ?! I'd lief he'd hired the town crier to speak his lines. GRAVEDIGGER: Persuading that good fellow to this new employment..might keep you from here.. ..indicates the grave, droll... This hole will accommodate a town crier as easily as a Player King. PLAYER KING: You jest.. Gestures towards the grave. Who's this for, anyway? GRAVEDIGGER: The Bloat King. The Player King is stopped in his tracks by this. PLAYER KING: 'The Bloat King'? Did you just say 'bloat' King? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye. PLAYER KING: (genuinely impressed) That's really VERY.. VERY.. good. I'll use that. GRAVEDIGGER: You're welcome. PLAYER KING: 'Bloat', (savouring the word) One of yours? GRAVEDIGGER: I can't claim that one. The Prince was the author of that sweet conceit. PLAYER KING: (slaps his paper) He writes rubbish like this and yet he can come up with something positively inspired like 'Bloat'? 'The Bloat King'! You wouldn't think it came from the same pen! He shakes his head, puzzled. PLAYER KING: Then, more injury. He lectures US on our declamation. What gall! He, who's never trod the boards in his life, is as full of thespian advice as a...as a... GRAVEDIGGER: ..an innkeeper's pisspot? PLAYER KING: (stopped in his tracks by this one) An innkeeper's pisspot!? Remarkable! One of his? GRAVEDIGGER: One of mine. The Player King is impressed, bewildered by the brilliance of it. PLAYER KING: You're making these up. GRAVEDIGGER: I am. I admit it. PLAYER KING: Do they just ...pop.. into your head? GRAVEDIGGER: You're not so bad yourself. 'Pop' is rather good. PLAYER KING: Do you think so? (very pleased) GRAVEDIGGER: One of yours? PLAYER KING: I suppose it is, really. But words come not easily to this poor player. What a gift you have! What a waste! GRAVEDIGGER: In a gravedigger? PLAYER KING: If you knew how I sweat and struggle to write speeches! You ever thought of treading the boards yourself? GRAVEDIGGER: I wouldn't presume. I'm a gravedigger. PLAYER KING: Only because you think like a gravedigger. (considering his friend) PLAYER KING: You're a well set up sort of a fellow. And it can't possibly be good for you..all this digging.. GRAVEDIGGER: Who'd do it if I didn't? PLAYER KING: Who cares? But, enough. The tale gets worse. He takes another stiff pull from the flask. The Gravedigger, likewise. The Prince has the temerity to say: 'Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.' He, giving thespian advice to Moi?! How do you like that? GRAVEDIGGER: Here's better advice.. PLAYER KING: Break a leg? GRAVEDIGGER: Leave Elsinore. Leave Denmark. It's a prison. PLAYER KING: (sly) I would...but there are considerations. Three square meals a day, for one. GRAVEDIGGER: Your head in a basket for another. PLAYER KING: And he does pay exceptionally well. GRAVEDIGGER: Consider it very inadequate danger money. PLAYER KING: (coy) And there is...a certain lady.. GRAVEDIGGER: (pouncing) The Queen. PLAYER KING: By the brow of Mars! (shocked, fearful, covering the Gravedigger's mouth) How did you know that? The Gravedigger laughs. GRAVEDIGGER: Are you yet familiar with the phrase: 'The Palace Steed'? Wide-eyed with a new wariness, the Player King thinks for a long moment. PLAYER KING: I know not the phrase, but now suspect that I may have couched with this same ominous mare? Yes? Cringing, not wanting to hear. The Gravedigger nods. GRAVEDIGGER: Most who dwell within the Palace walls have.. The Player King is downcast. PLAYER KING: (sobbing theatrically) She..even she... is given to inconstancy? GRAVEDIGGER: Within the palace..only with stableboys, grooms, ostlers and smithies. PLAYER KING: And without? The Gravedigger shrugs, 'who knows?' The Player King is devastated. No actor could play so false! (sobbing) Stableboys! He looks down the front of his breeches. Which could explain this... GRAVEDIGGER: (nervous) Explain what? PLAYER KING: The itch. GRAVEDIGGER: The itch!? PLAYER KING: Aye, since Elsinore, I have suffered from this poxy itch. The Gravedigger looks down the front of his own breeches and continues to do so during the following. The Player King begins to cast about as though looking for something. GRAVEDIGGER: Since Elsinore? The Player King lift a skull and searches inside it. Finding nothing, he stares the skull in the face. PLAYER KING: (dramatic disbelief) A Queen - who betrays love? GRAVEDIGGER: Not before? PLAYER KING: Before what? GRAVEDIGGER: Concentrate! Before Elsinore. The Player King picks up a second skull. Again, he finds nothing inside. He is becoming worried. PLAYER KING: What ARE you talking about? Here I am assailed by betrayal of love's chiefest affections and you rave on about geography? GRAVEDIGGER: (grabbing the Player King's shirtfront) The itch! Before Elsinore, or since? The Player King looks at him as though he were mad. He shakes him off and picks up a third skull. Searches, by now, frantically. Nothing. He shakes it in disbelief. PLAYER KING: You haven't by any chance seen...? The Gravedigger holds out a sealed paper at armslength... The Player King snatches the paper and whips it under his doublet. PLAYER KING: Did you open it? GRAVEDIGGER: No.........yes. PLAYER KING: Did you read what it said? GRAVEDIGGER: No.......... PLAYER KING: No? GRAVEDIGGER: Well, yes....but it was a riddle.. PLAYER KING: About what? gravedigger: If I knew that it wouldn't be a riddle, would it? PLAYER KING: (reading) 'Barbary steeds?' Yes, clearly nonsense. (airy innocence) Have you told anyone about this? GRAVEDIGGER: Yes. PLAYER KING: (horror) What! Who? GRAVEDIGGER: You. PLAYER KING: Oh...oh... (vast relief) Did you happen to see who left it here? GRAVEDIGGER: No....well, yes, actually. PLAYER KING: Tall...slim...good dresser? GRAVEDIGGER: He looked like a Norwegian tart. PLAYER KING: Ah...Osric. GRAVEDIGGER: Friend of yours? PLAYER KING: No...no...no...no...Never seen him in my life. The Gravedigger stares at him in frank disbelief. GRAVEDIGGER: Are you telling me there's more to all this than meets the..... Player King: ..Aye! (gagging the Gravedigger, fearfully) Exactly! You're beginning to understand! You don't think that all these intrigues and stratagems here in Elsinore...all these machinations and plots... GRAVEDIGGER: ...and a murder most foul? PLAYER KING: ...yes, up to and including murders most foul.... They are only the effects, not the cause. You don't really believe that these are the real story, do you? GRAVEDIGGER: They seem real enough to me. I've already buried Hamlet's father. PLAYER KING: And why was he killed? GRAVEDIGGER: Well, everyone knows the Bloat King lusted after the Qu......... (shattered) You don't mean......? PLAYER KING: You see? Maybe there was another reason. Maybe what you're hearing is what you were meant to hear. A story for public consumption. Maybe that's not what's really going on. GRAVEDIGGER: It's not? It's not? Alright, so how do I find out what's really going on? Are you going to tell me? PLAYER KING: (sly) Unfortunately, my lips are sealed. GRAVEDIGGER: (disgusted) There's a first time for everything. PLAYER KING: You work it out. You're smart. You're on the right track. All you have to do is just keep.... GRAVEDIGGER: No, please! I beg you! Don't say it... Don't say: 'Keep digging'. The Player King opens and closes his mouth.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..that's what you were about to say..'keep digging', wasn't it? PLAYER KING: (piqued) Well, as a matter of fact, it was. I accept that it was an unfortunate choice of words. I've told you I have little feeling for language. The Player King puts his fingers to his lips. PLAYER KING: Dad's the word. GRAVEDIGGER: But I want to know! PLAYER KING: Alright. So ask yourself: Who benefits from all this? Who gains most? The King? The Queen? Hamlet? Or ....maybe none of these? The Gravedigger thinks, frantically. His eyes light up as he connects. GRAVEDIGGER: Fortinbras! PLAYER KING: (gagging him, frantic with fear) Not out loud! They stand wide-eyed, until, gingerly, the Player King ungags the Gravedigger. GRAVEDIGGER: (sotto voce and horrified) Fortinbras? PLAYER KING: (impressed) Give the gentleman a coconut. You're not just a pretty face. The Gravedigger snatches up his spade. GRAVEDIGGER: You're talking about treason! Forget it! Forget this whole thing! Forget I asked! I don't want to know. (digging frantically) I'm perfectly content here.. digging ... ..no, I'll re-phrase that - planting the .. PLAYER KING: (smiling).... the profitable 'effects'? GRAVEDIGGER:(desperate) What is going on? The Player King embraces the Gravedigger. PLAYER KING: Farewell, friend. I have lines to learn. Strikes a dramatic pose. 'In second Husband let me be accursed.' We'll share more on the morrow. He strides off, contemptuously reciting: 'de -dum, de-dum, de-dum,' The Gravedigger considers the contents of his breeches then looks forward. GRAVEDIGGER: I fear me, we may have shared too much already. TO BLACK. Act I. Scene 3. GHOST: (tormented voice, off) Remember me... Lights. The Graveyard. The open grave. The Gravedigger sleeping nearby. Remember me... The GHOST, a sepulchral, muddied figure, climbs stiffly out of the grave. He looks around, unimpressed to find himself there. Profoundly stiff, he performs a series of Tai-chi stretching exercises. After a time, he notices the Gravedigger, crosses to him, leans close and taps him on the shoulder. The Gravedigger wakes. Stares. GHOST: (hopeful,) Remember me? The Gravedigger moves rapidly backwards five yards on all fours in extreme alarm. GRAVEDIGGER: (indignant) Excuse me! GHOST: Sorry. didn't mean to startle.. Unaware of effect of appearance.. Gesturing to his shroud. Considerably unattractive. He catches at his winding sheet; stares at it as though seeing it for the first time. GHOST: O horrible...horrible...most horrible. The Gravedigger makes a 'what-can-you-do' gesture. GRAVEDIGGER: The grave's custom tailoring, Illusion..no more..no less. GHOST: (regretful) Aye...aye...but hardly regal raiment. He adjusts his shroud to better advantage. GHOST: O what a falling off there was, Gravedigger. One minute, I'm lying in the orchard, taking my accustomed afternoon nap.. GRAVEDIGGER: Security-wise, somewhat dangerous, here in Elsinore, Yes? GHOST: Apparently. The next, I'm looking up at the chill Danish sky with you, sirrah, throwing spadefuls of freezing mud on my face. A beat. It's really not good enough, you know. Very crude. Surely there could be a more..dignified...more regal ...arrangement? GRAVEDIGGER: The grave's accustomed ceremony, Illusion..no more..no less. GHOST: Aye, Death, the leveller, knows no rank, I suppose? GRAVEDIGGER: (a certain satisfaction) None whatsoever. The Ghost catches the Gravedigger by the sleeve. GHOST: List, list.. O, list. You are a man, Gravedigger, as other men. These calumnies she spreads about me.. these odious comparisons. GRAVEDIGGER: Gratification-wise? GHOST: Aye. These scorns that in her bosom lodge..unman a man. A kingly husband cannot forever be.... GRAVEDIGGER: Honeying? GHOST: (surprised) Aye, Honeying. Exactly that. Toward the end, the very term alarmed me. The prospect of having to stiffen the.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..sinews? GHOST; Right.. And summon up the.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..blood? GHOST: Right..night after night!.. would harrow my soul. She displays an unnatural appetite. GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, Illusion, a demanding ruler..that she is. GHOST: You know? The Gravedigger is appalled by his slip. Ghost, sudden insight. Ah! Points to grave. All that commotion..that crying out..just then.That whimpering, that pleading for it to end..was that her? GRAVEDIGGER: (embarrassed) No, Illusion. Actually the pleading was me. GHOST: (triumph) Hah! Then YOU understand. GRAVEDIGGER: (desperately apologetic) You must believe, Sire. It was never, never my intention.. GHOST: With my lamented, virtuous-seeming Queen, it was seldom mine. GRAVEDIGGER: ..above my station and all that..honestly never aspired to a ..Queen.. GHOST: (amused) Like that other lascivious leveller, Death, my incestuous Gertrude knows no rank, either. The Gravedigger nods, nervously, grateful for the understanding. A cock crows. The Ghost starts, fearfully. GHOST: That damned bird..with its fearful summons. I must render myself to the sulphurous and tormenting flames GRAVEDIGGER: I am sorry. The Ghost goes to the grave. GHOST: No good will come of this general lust and lewdness, Gravedigger, mark my words. Through this freezing, narrow portal of yours, many will shortly pass. GRAVEDIGGER: I admit mixed feelings, Illusion. There's a certain profit in bloody intrigue..for a poor man. GHOST: (skeptical laugh) Aye. Take some small comfort from that, if you will. More comfort than this wretched, wronged King enjoys in this damp and muddy bed you fashioned for me. He climbs down into the grave. Remember me... As he descends further, (more sepulchral) Remember me... out of sight... (voice off) Remember me....... GRAVEDIGGER: Decent sort of a fellow. Much loved by the common herd. Digs on. GRAVEDIGGER: Love. There's not much of it about - in Elsinore. Lust, yes. But love? Very little. So I dig this grave without enthusiasm; the last resting place for someone young who will die of love. A double waste - to die of a malady so rare, it seldom strikes, and so fleeting that most of us barely know we've caught it before it is gone. He uncovers a skull. Examines it briefly, tosses it to one side of the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: A previous tenant is acceptable - if he's been planted long enough. Unless he was a tanner. Holds nose. They tend to hang about...tanners. He digs on. OPHELIA: (off) (singing) Young men will do it, if they come to it.. GERTRUDE: (off) Oh, Gravedigger! Enter OPHELIA, (singing) By cock, they are to blame. and GERTRUDE from the opposite side. GERTRUDE: Oh, Grave....... Seeing each other, they stop short, but are unable to avoid one another. GRAVEDIGGER: There's a certain Oedipal quality to this, don't you think? GERTUDE: Ah! The unhappy cause of my dear Hamlet's present wildness! OPHELIA: You are too modest, Ma'am. The credit is all yours. Through what follows the Gravedigger turns his head back and forth, as though following a tennis match. GERTRUDE: Why walk you in this dreer place? Do you yet pursue my poor son? OPHELIA: As you well know Ma'am, your son caught me long ago. And I find livelier company here than at court. GRAVEDIGGER: That would be about forty-thirty! GERTRUDE: You must be lost. There are no niches, closets, cupboards, nooks, crannies, nor linen presses here, Miss. GRAVEDIGGER: Boxes! Boxes! She forgot boxes! Duece! OPHELIA; And you must be lonely. I see no goat-herders, fellmongers nor night- soil collectors, Ma'am. GRAVEDIGGER: A palpable advantage! GERTRUDE: I hear you delude your poor father with talk of nunneries. I doubt if there's a mother superior in the land who would take you in, Miss GRAVEDIGGER: Deuce! OPHELIA: I doubt if there's a priest in the land you have not taken on, Ma'am. They stare at each other. Cool. GERTRUDE: A very good day to you, miss. Gertrude quits the field. GRAVEDIGGER: (awed) Game by default! OPHELIA: (singing) Quoth she, 'Before you tumble me, You promised me to wed. So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, An' thou had'st not come to my bed.' OPHELIA: Good day to you, Gravedigger. GRAVEDIGGER: And to you, young miss. He holds up his spade. GRAVEDIGGER: What would you call this, Miss? OPHELIA; I should call it a spade. GRAVEDIGGER: I thought you might. Ophelia smiles an amused, catlike smile. OPHELIA: Why do they never write songs about young woman's desires - and our conquests? Nothing mad about this Ophelia, merely skeptical. GRAVEDIGGER: A good question. Perhaps songs - like history - are written by the victors. OPHELIA: And we are never victors? The Gravedigger says nothing. I am no loser, Gravedigger. I am full to the brim with passion spent in me. She comes to the edge of the grave and looks down into it. A fresh grave. You are always digging fresh graves. GRAVEDIGGER: They ripen quickly, Miss - and then are plucked. OPHELIA: And who will pluck this one? GRAVEDIGGER: (regret) You will, Miss. Ophelia does not react to this. (sings) OPHELIA: Then up he rose, and donned his clothes, and dupp'd the chamber door. Let in the maid, that out a maid, never departed more.' GRAVEDIGGER: (moved) A pretty song - pretty lady. OPHELIA: Isn't it! I wrote it. From the life. GRAVEDIGGER: Autobiographical? OPHELIA: More, or less. - coloured by just a touch of poetic license. She hugs herself, joyfully. OPHELIA: We make music together, the Prince and I. GRAVEDIGGER: (tentative) Honeying? OPHELIA: Ah...I like that term, sirrah. Honeying? The sound of it sits lightly. 'Tis true. My sweet honey pours like soft slow light over my night-mantled, inky-cloaked, dark- enveloped princeling. It calms him...lifts the cloak of madness from him.. hounds away his wolf-hour- walking, imagined ghosts more powerfully than any cockcrow. A beat. I was chaste as ice and pure as driven snow, longing to unmask my beauty to the moon. Then he took me by the wrist and held my hand, staring at me as though OPHELIA;(cont'd) he would paint my portrait - and tumbled me most beautifully - (amused) Or rather, in truth, Gravedigger, I tumbled him. And now, like rosy clouds we tumble and fuse together, wherever, whenever... Very pleased. GRAVEDIGGER: (skeptical) Tumble? Fuse? Present tense? OPHELIA: Well, until the past week, or so. (puzzled) A sparrow fell somewhere.. which seemed to slow him...to distract.. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Gravitational sparrows do not auger well. She's too young to know that. So, there's some advantage in innocence. (to Ophelia) And what thinks your father of this? OPHELIA: ( shrugs, disdainful) He thinks the worst. He warns me, somewhat belatedly, to beware the burning blood, the prodigal soul.. the promises some take for fire. GRAVEDIGGER: But you do not? OPHELIA: Mistake them? No, friend. I recognise fire when it warms me. My foolish father commands me to give the Prince hard words. GRAVEDIGGER: A common defence. Merely a father bolting stable doors.. OPHELIA: ...from behind which, this filly has long since...most deliciously...bolted. GRAVEDIGGER: So you do not? OPHELIA: Give the Prince hard words? No, I give him soft kisses. GRAVEDIGGER: And what thinks your brother of this? OPHELIA: (contempt) When Laertes raises his head from the Queen's lap..or, indeed, any lap he happens to be facing.. he mouths the thoughts of a hypocrite. GRAVEDIGGER: And what thinks your distracted Prince? OPHELIA: Sparrows notwithstanding, he lives... we live..for the here and the now.. the wherever...the whenever...the-often-as- possible present.. What else is there? If this.. Indicates the grave.. ..is to be my quietus, so be it. We have lived. Deeply moved, the Gravedigger touches her cheek. GRAVEDIGGER: You may be the only sane person in Elsinore. She smiles sadly at him. OPHELIA: And you, Gravedigger, And you, surely? A beat. Will you put your arms around me? He hesitates, then does so. She rests her cheek on his chest. The Gravedigger is devastated with pity. TO BLACK. Act 1. Scene 5. The graveyard. The grave. From out of it, dirt flies up. Someone is digging at speed. The Gravedigger appears above the lip of the grave just in time to see the King, and Laertes hurry across the stage, looking worried. CLAUDIUS: I do not trust Fortinbras. His levies are not raised to smite the Polacks but to give assay of arms against us! LAERTES: I do believe it. They go off. GRAVEDIGGER: The intrigue is thickening. Events are crowding. There is a pressing need for graves. I sense it but, it's one damned interruption after another! He disappears once more. Dirt flies up. Enter HAMLET, clearly distraught. His stockings are down-gyved. Knock- kneed, he walks about in all directions, muttering to himself. Suddenly he stops and points dramatically up to the sky. HAMLET: A camel! The Gravedigger's head appears above the grave. He looks all around, sees Hamlet, then looks up to the sky. Again he looks all around. Still he sees nothing. He disappears back into the grave. More dirt flies. Hamlet lurches around a bit more. Again he points upwards. HAMLET: A whale! The Gravedigger re-appears and looks around once more. Nothing. He resumes digging. HAMLET: (petulent) A weasel, then? The Gravedigger re-appears, looks at Hamlet, irritated. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) A snake...mad as a... HAMLET: (excited) Where? GRAVEDIGGER: Where what? HAMLET: The snake! GRAVEDIGGER: What snake? HAMLET: So you see nothing there? GRAVEDIGGER: Where, my lord? HAMLET:(furious, pointing down, left, but looking up, to right) Up there! GRAVEDIGGER: Ah... (considering the risk of offending a Prince)..A snake? HAMLET: (even more furious) Who said anything about a snake? GRAVEDIGGER: (wanting to humour) Perhaps a weasel-ish kind of snake? A beat. Even a little one? HAMLET: Is there something the matter with you? See! Pointing right up, and looking down, left. That poor ghost on the battlement there! The Gravedigger takes a quick, confused look around, sees nothing. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) These bodiless creations are the very coinage of his brain. Hamlet beckons the Gravedigger from the grave. He scrambles out. HAMLET: (piteously) Poor ghost. Poor father. Hamlet puts his arm around the Gravedigger's shoulder.... wild-eyed, conspiratorial. HAMLET: He was in my mother's chamber! The ghost. (fury) But not in her bed! There lies... an ulcerous apology for a husband. (rising hysteria) ..a shame's blush of a husband.. ..A slave's offal of a husband.. ..a false dicer's oath of a husband.. (screaming) ..a pestilent..configuration..of vapours..of a husband! GRAVEDIGGER: Steady on! HAMLET: Sorry. Got carried away. Takes a few deep steadying breaths. Mine uncle. The Bloat King of Denmark, husband of she who was, and is again, Queen. He..in her bed (disbelief)..paddling her neck with his damned fingers. GRAVEDIGGER: Paddling, my lord? HAMLET: Aye, paddling. GRAVEDIGGER: You don't mean 'honeying'? Hamlet grabs the Gravedigger's shirt. HAMLET: How do you, a common Gravedigger, know 'honeying'? GRAVEDIGGER: (hopeful) I just made it up? HAMLET: (impressed) Did you? It's very good. Very...apposite. GRAVEDIGGER: Thank you, Sire. HAMLET: I'll use that. (impassioned) A honeying paddler of a husband! GRAVEDIGGER: Steady on! HAMLET: Sorry. Hamlet indicates the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: (fast, in the next few speeches anticipating the questions) Yours, sir. HAMLET: Whose grave is this? How did you know the answer before I asked the question? The Gravedigger says nothing. HAMLET: (sings) 'Young men do it, if they come to it If they come to it.. By cock...' Ha! I like her bawdy songs! That's good, isn't it? 'By cock'? GRAVEDIGGER: Most apposite, sir. HAMLET: (sings) 'By cock, they are to blame' I like the way she sings that, 'By cock' GRAVEDIGGER: I'm sure she sings it beautifully, sire. HAMLET: (sings) 'By cock, they are to blame..' GRAVEDIGGER: (trying to break the pattern) Does she make up the songs, sir? HAMLET: (fury) I'll ask the...(dying fall)..questions......here.. Aye, she takes them from the life... ....her songs. GRAVEDIGGER: Her life? HAMLET: Her life (sadly) Our life. (now cunning) But heavily disguised with artifice. Her foolish old father.. she would keep him ignorant. (dreamily) She gives private time to me and has, of my audiences been free and bounteous. GRAVEDIGGER: She is no green girl then? HAMLET: (laughs) No..no..no..no..no! She gives me many sweet, sweet tenders of her affection. (sings) 'Before you tumbled me'... HAMLET: Thus she sings. You see, Gravedigger, she tumbled me. I have the longer tether, but she beguiles me the more. She garlands me with sweet perfumed flowers. Suddenly, Hamlet throws himself on the mound of earth by the grave. (anguished) I loved Ophelia! He rises and carefully dusts off his clothing. He flings himself down again. I loved Ophelia! Again he rises and dusts himself down. A third time he throws himself down. I loved Ophelia! Again he rises. He addresses the Gravedigger. HAMLET: We must rehearse for coming grief. I loved her, you see. GRAVEDIGGER: But surely - 'I love Ophelia' -present tense? HAMLET: No. I use the past tense as it will be spoken in the future - You follow me? GRAVEDIGGER: I see. (clearly he does not) HAMLET: You do follow me? The Gravedigger nods, but rolls his eyes. Comprez? The Gravedigger nods again. Capito? The Gravedigger nods again. HAMLET: Verstehen? The Gravedigger nods once more. HAMLET: Understand? GRAVEDIGGER: Of course I understand. That's Danish. HAMLET: Sorry. GRAVEDIGGER: The past tense as it will be spoken in the future, right? HAMLET: Right! ..claps the Gravedigger on the back. And you merely a digger of tombs. Remarkable! He stares down into the grave. She cannot keep her hands off me. Never could. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Oh, lovely prospect! (to Hamlet) The fair Ophelia? HAMLET: (snorts, disgusted) Nay! The fair Gertrude, my Queen. GRAVEDIGGER: (gingerly, aghast) Your mother?! HAMLET: The same. GRAVEDIGGER: A remarkable.... Stops himself. Hamlet stares at him, gimlet-like. GRAVEDIGGER: I hear...a remarkable woman. A nervous moment, but Hamlet is now lost in thought. HAMLET: She lives by my looks. (musing) There's something about an older woman, don't you agree? GRAVEDIGGER: (careful) Ah....depends what you mean by 'an older 'woman'. HAMLET: (sudden) Have you been with my mother? GRAVEDIGGER: The Queen?! HAMLET: The same. GRAVEDIGGER: No! HAMLET: Everyone else has. (fury) My father's brother has! Ostlers, stableboys, passing players.. Surreptitiously, the Gravedigger turns half to one side and looks down the front of his breeches. Hamlet point s at the Gravedigger's crutch, but looks the opposite way. HAMLET: A weasel! The Gravedigger stares at the Prince, startled. Then looks back inside his breeches. Hamlet walks away. He stops, sucks a finger and holds it up. HAMLET: What direction is that? GRAVEDIGGER: Northerly, sir. HAMLET: Then the wind is..? GRAVEDIGGER: Southerly, sir. Hamlet bends right over and stares fixedly at his shoes. He points at them.. HAMLET: What are... No! Don't tell me. It's coming...on the tip of my...Yes! YES! A hawk. He looks hard then, puzzled, looks frantically all round. Stare back at his shoes. HAMLET: Nay - a handsaw. (to himself, puzzled) There was a time I could tell the difference. He sobs, piteously then, by an act of will, straightens. HAMLET: I go, friend. He walks away, backwards. GRAVEDIGGER: Backwards, Sir? HAMLET: Aye, backwards, Gravedigger. Like a crab. (eerie laugh) Like a crab. He disappears off. (voice) Like a crab. The Gravedigger stares after him. GRAVEDIGGER: (sorrowful) Poor, benighted Prince. Apparitions stalk his perturbed spirit squeaking and gibbering of Elsinore's lust...and treasons mount against him. But how can I - a gravedigger - warn him of these: 'a wager of barbary steeds.. envenomed swords..his death by drowning'. These sulphurous contagions will fill this little cockpit... ..encompassing the graveyard.. ..all too soon. He climbs back down into the grave. Enter a KING, CLAUDIUS agitated, seemingly escaping from a pursuer. Claudius notices the wine-flask. He drains it in the way a drunkard drinks. QUEEN: (voice off) Yoo-hoo!! Yoo- hoo! Claudius looks frantic. He leaps into the open grave. GRAVEDIGGER (voice off) Aaaaaaaagh! Enter the Queen, obviously looking for someone. QUEEN: Claudius! Claudius! Where are you? She casts about, then leaves, looking determined. There is a long pause. The Gravedigger's head appears above the lip of the grave. He looks around, checking to see if the coast is clear. He climbs out, painfully. Doubles over in pain, then straightens up, rubbing his stomach. He hobbles to the rear, then to the front, looks both ways. He returns to the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: (groaning) All clear, Sire. Claudius emerges from the grave, looking sheepish. For effect, the Gravedigger doubles over in pain, this time with maximum drama. CLAUDIUS: Frightfully sorry. I had no idea.. GRAVEDIGGER: A nap. CLAUDIUS: Nap? GRAVEDIGGER: I was taking one. Forty winks. CLAUDIUS: After luncheon? GRAVEDIGGER: Lifelong habit. CLAUDIUS: Do the same myself...but not in.. Points to grave.. GRAVEDIGGER: Wouldn't be appropriate, Sire. CLAUDIUS: Not regal? GRAVEDIGGER: Too earthy by half. CLAUDIUS: Looks comfortable, though. The Gravedigger makes a skeptical, so-so gesture. GRAVEDIGGER: More peaceful than comfortable. QUEEN: (off) Yoo-hoo! Claudius is poised to leap again into the grave. (fainter) Yoo-hoo! They stare off until the threat passes. CLAUDIUS: Mind if I try? GRAVEDIGGER: Be my guest. Claudius climbs down into the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: (to front) A practise run. The Gravedigger looks down. GRAVEDIGGER: (Accusing) You've done this before! CLAUDIUS: (indignant) No,I haven't! GRAVEDIGGER: How did you know about crossing your hands on your chest like that? CLAUDIUS: A perfectly appropriate regal gesture. Actually, I saw my late brother laid out. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Saw to it..that his late brother was laid out. CLAUDIUS: It's a touch snug. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside, tiredly) It would be for 'The Bloat King'. (to Claudius) They come in one size only, Sire. CLAUDIUS: No Kingsize? GRAVEDIGGER: 'Fraid not. Claudius appears once more. The Gravedigger offers his hand and pulls him out. CLAUDIUS: Who's this one for? GRAVEDIGGER: (awkward) Ah... you, Sire. Claudius does not react to this information. CLAUDIUS: Do you have trouble with women, Gravedigger? GRAVEDIGGER: (heartfelt) Not nearly enough. CLAUDIUS: Affairs are splendid things. Ah! The pleasures of the illicit bed! GRAVEDIGGER: The incestuous bed.. CLAUDIUS: Yes, I grant. Incestuous even then, when we were cuckolding my virtuous brother...And all the more satisfying for that. (savouring) Ah! The rank sweat of her..the stewing...the cloying...the...the.... GRAVEDIGGER: ..honeying? CLAUDIUS: Honeying, Gravedigger? Absolutely. (aside) Funny, that's a word my Queen uses. The Gravedigger looks alarmed. CLAUDIUS: But marriage, Gravedigger is, quite frankly, how shall I put it...a... GRAVEDIGGER: A disappointment? CLAUDIUS: Yes, that...but more a...a.. GRAVEDIGGER: A wearisome burden? CLAUDIUS: 'Wearisome burden? Yes, that's very good!' After the first careless rapture, it becomes a repetitive business. There are affairs of State, like placating hot Fortinbras so that he cuts Polack throats instead of ours. CLAUDIUS: (cont'd) My crown..my ambitions...unwarranted suspicions about the accession... GRAVEDIGGER: (spontaneous) Unwarranted suspicions?! The comment- accompanied by a shriek of disbelief - sneaks out; is immediately regretted. CLAUDIUS: (unaware) ..the general gender's affection for that odious, moralising son of hers. You've heard the talk? GRAVEDIGGER: Soldier, scholar, poet...that kind of thing? CLAUDIUS: Precisely. Very difficult to counter. QUEEN: (off, distant) Yoo-hoo! A moment of panic for the Claudius, poised for flight. They wait, staring of together. CLAUDIUS: If only she would refrain tonight. GRAVEDIGGER: The next abstinence would be all the easier? CLAUDIUS: And the next more easy. Poor woman! I think only of her. GRAVEDIGGER: That goes without saying. CLAUDIUS: Awful affliction. GRAVEDIGGER: Compulsive ardour? CLAUDIUS: She is passion's slave. Would that she would assume a virtue that she has not. And yet...suspicion and jealousy tug at me like a dropsy. There's not a stable, not a manservants quarters I can enter without sensing her lustful presence; not a smithy; not an ostlery, not a shed, not a barn not.. Looks around the graveyards suddenly suspicious CLAUDIUS: (to himself) ...a graveyard? Glares at the Gravedigger. Honeying? This in the vocabulary of a common Gravedigger? (To Gravedigger ) Did you say, 'Honeying'? The Gravedigger looks blank. (thundering) Honeying, sirrah! GRAVEDIGGER: That was your word, Sire. CLAUDIUS: No, it wasn't! GRAVEDIGGER: (nervous) Wasn't it? CLAUDIUS: Does my Queen ever come here? GRAVEDIGGER: (too fast) NO!..Yes....A moment ago...she passed...looking for your Majesty! He makes to move off. GRAVEDIGGER: Shall I?... Claudius grabs his arm.. ...fetch? .....her? CLAUDIUS: (deeply suspicious) Do you know the term, 'The Palace Steed'? GRAVEDIGGER: (again too quick) NO! (now too thoughtful) 'The Palace Steed'? ...er........no. CLAUDIUS: Did you just use the term "Palace Steed"? (aside) This metaphor in the vocabulary of a common gravedigger? GRAVEDIGGER: (panic-stricken) That was your phrase, Sire. CLAUDIUS: I distinctly heard you say it, just then. GRAVEDIGGER: But only after you said it first. CLAUDIUS: Did I? GRAVEDIGGER: Yes, you said, 'Palace Steed' after you said 'honeying'. CLAUDIUS: You said, 'honeying'. GRAVEDIGGER: No, I didn't! CLAUDIUS: Yes, you did. GRAVEDIGGER: But only after you said it first. CLAUDIUS: Did I? Claudius walks away a few paces. CLAUDIUS: (thoughtful) Grooms and stableboys..and now gravediggers! Is it possible? (roaring) I will not have my beard shook! The Gravedigger says nothing, transfixed by fear. Claudius walks away, distracted. The Gravedigger continues to stay rigid. Claudius marches away but, suddenly, he kneels down. CLAUDIUS: O! A brother's murder to expiate! He tries to pray whilst walking forward on his knees. Up thoughts! GRAVEDIGGER: Off head! ...clasping his own neck, tenderly. CLAUDIUS: No one is listening! He goes off, still on his knees. The Gravedigger kneels down, terminally relieved. GRAVEDIGGER: (aping Claudius) Let's hope no one is talking! The Gravedigger rises, dusts himself off, looking sourly after the departed Claudius. GRAVEDIGGER: A mildew'd ear of a king! He begins to dig. 'Unwarranted suspicions!' He laughs wildly. The Palace dogs bark the dark detail of his crime. He's already filled one Royal grave...and soon.. Some satisfaction in the thought.. ...fittingly.....snugly...will fill another. TO BLACK A long pause. In the blackness... HAMLET: (voice) How now? A rat? Die, rat! Polonius: (voice) Aaaaaaaaargh! Oh, I am slain! QUEEN: (voice) O, Hamlet, what hast thou done? HAMLET (voice) Polonius! Ha! I took thee for thy better. Thou wretched, rash intruding fool, farewell. Mother..good night. I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Act 1. Scene 6. The Gravedigger is juggling three skulls. Enter the Player King, furtive. PLAYER KING: Any messages? The Gravedigger drives the three skulls at him one after the other. GRAVEDIGGER: Niet! Niente! Nada! Keep me out of it! As the Player King checks out the contents: PLAYER KING: You're already in it. GRAVEDIGGER: (indignant) No, I'm not! PLAYER KING: Oh, yes you are! Up to .... He makes a throat-cutting gesture. ...there! If you hear anything...do let me know. GRAVEDIGGER: No way! It's nothing to do with me! PLAYER KING: Then you shouldn't read other people's mail, should you? GRAVEDIGGER: I only glanced at it. PLAYER KING: You know what they say about 'a little knowledge is dangerous thing'? GRAVEDIGGER: Who said that? PLAYER KING: Well nobody has....yet, but someone will. (amused now) By the way, friend, the word is, you're being short- changed, business- wise. GRAVEDIGGER: Never! The Player King drops the skulls onto the earth mound. PLAYER KING: Some old man..run through. Hamlet, of course. The man's certifiable. (highly amused) And they can't find the body. There's one stiff'll render you no profit. GRAVEDIGGER: He'll come to them, soon enough. They'll nose him in passageways. Then...he'll come to me. PLAYER KING: Ripeness.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..is all. They laugh, but are cut short as Hamlet enters. The Gravedigger picks up the skulls and determinedly juggles. HAMLET: Ah! Lord Worms! GRAVEDIGGER: Lord Hamlet. The Player King looks alarmed. PLAYER KING: Lord preserve us... (aside) ...from would-be poets! He goes to move off. Hamlet catches his arm. HAMLET: Nay! Stay, good Player. I have lines for thee! The Player King is brought up short. Total despair. I jest! Hamlet laughs wildly at his own joke. The Gravedigger drops a skull. Hamlet picks it up, suddenly deadly serious. HAMLET: Whose skull is this? GRAVEDIGGER: The king's jester, sire. Yorick. HAMLET: (deeply moved) This? GRAVEDIGGER: Even so. HAMLET: Alas Poor Yorick. I knew him, Gravedigger. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment? He stops. The skull falls from his hand. PLAYER KING: (astonished) Why couldn't he write lines like that for me?! HAMLET: (to Player King) But you keep strange company, sirrah.. Indicates the Gravedigger, still with a skull in each hand. ..this juggler of skulls who stalks us, patient as the Devil's crow on a bedpost. PLAYER KING: He is but a man, sir, who must play a part, as we all must. HAMLET: Play a part? Are we all merely players in some dumb show? PLAYER KING: Aye, sir. HAMLET: Then this....(encompasses the graveyard) is but mummery?..All this,,mere artifice? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, sir. A dress rehearsal. HAMLET: But for what? GRAVEDIGGER: For what is to come. HAMLET: And what is to come? The Gravedigger points to the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: Inevitably...a tragedy.... PLAYER KING: (full, flowery drama) ...called Life! HAMLET: Life? We have but the one, while you, Sir Player, advantage us. Do you not play many lives? PLAYER KING: And right convincingly. HAMLET: Are, then, all your lives tragedies? PLAYER KING: From time to time the performance is leavened by the odd comic invention, but for those of us who are, happily, passion's slaves..it usually ends splendidly. HAMLET: By which you mean? PLAYER KING: (full tragic mode) Tragically, of course! HAMLET: And we.....? (indicates grave) GRAVEDIGGER: ..inevitably.. HAMLET: ..arrive here? GRAVEDIGGER: That has been my experience. PLAYER KING: (carried away) But, my Lord, we do arrive from different points of the compass and, if there's a fair wind at our back - or a fair maid at our front (laughing heartily at his own sally) PLAYER KING: ....the journey, or, in my case, the many memorable journeys.. HAMLET: Journeys...in the plural? PLAYER KING: Most assuredly in the plural. Sire.... are voyages of sweet fleshly discovery. HAMLET: (dangerous) Fleshly discovery? Do you talk of lust, sirrah? The Gravedigger frantically shakes his head at the Player King. PLAYER KING: Ah...(retrieving)...Oh, no, sir. Not lust...more...more...(lost for words) GRAVEDIGGER: ..companionship. PLAYER KING: Yes! Companionship. Exactly. GRAVEDIGGER: When two are one flesh.. HAMLET: (pouncing) Did you say 'flesh'? GRAVEDIGGER: Perhaps I'll re-phrase that, Sire. When two are...friends.. HAMLET: (accusing) Your thoughts are between maid's legs. PLAYER KING: (frantic, Lame) No, more on friendship, I do assure your nobleness. HAMLET: (no longer with them) Festering corruption.. GRAVEDIGGER: (to Player King) I fear we have pointed our discourse in a dark direction. PLAYER KING: (desperate distraction) Sir! Sir! The herald lark gives promise of a soft spring this year. HAMLET: (losing control) Grunting and sweating! GRAVEDIGGER: (unconvincing) It is a strikingly beautiful morning, my lord. HAMLET: (off the planet) Everywhere..everything shouts, groans moans, whispers, wails, shrieks of...Lust!..lust..lust.. PLAYER KING: Surely not, your Eminence? This hat (he takes off his hat, grandly) is innocent, surely? HAMLET: (accusing) It speaks of lust! GRAVEDIGGER: This spade...Is neuter as a gelding..would you not agree? HAMLET: Lust! The Player King holds up his scabbard. PLAYER KING: A mummer's sword only...why it does not even have a lethal point. This can hardly make you think of... HAMLET: Lust! The Gravedigger holds up a skull, nervously. GRAVEDIGGER: Sire? HAMLET: (staring at it) Again! Lust! At a loss, the Player King pats his pockets..pulls out a handkerchief, shudders at the sight of it and, gingerly, hold's it with his fingertips at armslength. PLAYER KING: This? (hopelessly) HAMLET: (out of control) Lust! lust! lust! GRAVEDIGGER: You do seem, my honoured Lord, to be unbuckled by thoughts of lust. HAMLET: (astonished, perfectly normal) I ? Unbuckled by thoughts of lust? I think not of lust. It is you who constantly speak of it! ..his accusing gesture embraces them both.. (again broken) Everywhere! Lust! He leaves, walking backwards Lust! (Voice, ever fainter, off) Lust... Lust.... The two are shaken. PLAYER KING: Madness in great ones..interesting enough to watch, but nonethless, a worry. The Gravedigger indicates the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: ..It inevitably..and over a wide area.. PLAYER KING: (tentative) ...proves fatal? GRAVEDIGGER: That has been my experience. The two grimace nervously in unison, very worried. TO BLACK Act 1. Scene 7. The graveyard. The Gravedigger is sitting mournfully on the pile of earth beside the open grave. GRAVEDIGGER: Ah..her fluid, regal appetite..the generosity...the invention...especially the invention...but here's the rub.. Grimaces at a painful thought and rubs his crotch, gingerly. ..suddenly, I'm pissing fish-hooks. He looks down the front of his breeches. Royal fish-hooks, I'll grant you - but fish-hooks nonetheless. He stands up and looks back towards the Palace. Behind the walls, they play their royal games. Outside the moat, here, we pay the peasant's price. We are but the fishy prey caught- somewhat painfully - upon her lustful barb. Too small to keep...too sweet to throw back. (wistful) But, I do confess it, Love's pox has seldom been so sweetly earned. (affected by the memory of it) A truly astonishing woman. He begins digging. QUEEN:(voice off) Oh, Gravedigger! The Gravedigger leaps hastily into the grave. QUEEN:(voice off, nearer) Where are you? Enter Queen. QUEEN: Gravedigger! Enter Claudius. As soon as he sees Gertrude he spins on his heel and heads off the opposite way. Too late. QUEEN: My sweet neglectful Lord! Claudius stops as though shot. The Queen rushes to him, throws her arms around him, begins to kiss him passionately whilst tearing at his clothes. He stands impassively. The Gravedigger's head appears. He watches what follows. CLAUDIUS: Enough! She continues unabashed. CLAUDIUS: Enough! Sorrows battalions are upon us and you would cover me with your reechy kisses? GRAVEDIGGER: 'Reechy kisses' is good. QUEEN:(all over him) Since when were my kisses 'reechy'? CLAUDIUS: There are affairs of State. QUEEN: More pressing than this? CLAUDIUS: Aye, madam. QUEEN: 'Twas not always so. CLAUDIUS: (fighting her off) Fortinbras does not fail to pester us. There is some plot afoot! I can sense it! Your son must to England! QUEEN: Ah! Methinks you only part him from Ophelia for your own lustful purposes. CLAUDIUS: Ophelia!? Your son is mad and dangerous. For these reasons I ship him hence - not because of Ophelia. QUEEN: Do not deny that the liquid dew of her youth pleases you? CLAUDIUS: (amused) Aye, madam, I do confess it, freely. GRAVEDIGGER: (shocked) The King? Ophelia? There's simply not enough to keep these people occupied! QUEEN: A celestial maiden. CLAUDIUS: Aye, and one who quickens this royal blood. QUEEN: That has not, of late, been quickened by mine. Claudius shrugs. CLAUDIUS: So? QUEEN:(thoughtful) How long will Hamlet be gone? Claudius is non-committal. Perhaps I could use his absence to persuade Ophelia towards our royal couch? GRAVEDIGGER: OUR royal couch! This is outrageous! The King puts his arm around the Queen CLAUDIUS: Ah! Now there's a noble purpose. They kiss. The Queen looks all around. QUEEN: We never have done it in.. A sly glance encompassing the graveyard.. Claudius takes her meaning. CLAUDIUS: (shocked) In a graveyard? (aside) The thought blows a North wind on this present ardour. QUEEN: Nor in a grave.. They turn together and regard the open grave. CLAUDIUS: (alarm) In a grave? Holding his hand, the Queen jumps down. CLAUDIUS: Nay, Gertrude! This is too much. Still looking forward, the Queen is feeling around by her knees. She finds something interesting. QUEEN: (smiling, cool) You will not fall to, then? CLAUDIUS: (retreating) Time presses, beloved. I must attend recent hazards of Denmark's estate. QUEEN: Then farewell. Claudius hurries off. The Queen smiles broadly to herself then sinks down. Gravedigger! After a moment the Gravedigger's head appears. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) Scratching two itches is, they say, no harder than scratching the one. QUEEN: (off, imperious) Gravedigger! GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, Ma'am. ...a seraphic smile. At your majesty's service. He sinks down out of sight. TO BLACK. INTERVAL Act 2. Scene 1. The graveyard. The Gravedigger inside the grave, resting his chin on his hands, his hands on the lip of the grave. GRAVEDIGGER: There's merit in soft Royal command. Who can resist the whim of a monarch? I, mere subject vassal than I am, would not play rebellious subject to Denmark's Queen. Her wish, my most happily obeyed command. I do repent, of course... He bursts out laughing in disbelief at his good fortune. But heaven hath pleased it so. Incredible woman.... He gives a prodigious yawn, Oh, most incredible. He sighs and squints downwards towards the front of his breeches. Grimaces. GRAVEDIGGER: Some say you can return the pox from whence it came. That it is not taken, but only briefly borrowed...a kind of equal exchange of love tokens..an affectionate cancelling out. Shrugs. Some say not. Ah, well. no matter. He sighs heavily, smiling. There are some prices worth the paying...some mortal sins worth skirting heaven for. But I go to my resting place without sin in this particular matter. GRAVEDIGGER: Now - as is my custom in the afternoon - it is time for a healing sleep within my tranquil, if somewhat macabre cockpit. And so, presently, au revoir. He smiles a beatific smile, yawns, stretches briefly and sinks down out of sight. OPHELIA appears, walking slowly with her arm around Hamlet. Disconsolate, he slumps down on the pile of earth by the grave. HAMLET: (frantic) All reason has deserted me. OPHELIA: All reason has deserted Elsinore. HAMLET: I am to England banished. OPHELIA: (shocked) No! Why? HAMLET: For madness. Your father's death hath sent me packing thus. OPHELIA: (touching his hair, sympathetic) Regret not, my poor foolish father. Your deadly thrust had a purer purpose. HAMLET: That now weighs me down with a most heavy passport. Most heavy. OPHELIA: Be at peace. His time had run. HAMLET: As has mine. My mother's bridegroom tempts me with speed aboard. He presses his head against her shoulder. HAMLET: Whose grave is that? OPHELIA: I know not, my lord. Hamlet leaps to his feet. HAMLET: It is mine. OPHELIA: (shocked) No! HAMLET: It will suffice. Ophelia crosses and looks down into the grave. OPHELIA: Say you not so. It is tenanted already. HAMLET: (frantic) Am I to share my deadly journey? Hamlet looks down into the grave. Is it the poor, honest ghost? OPHELIA: Nay, Hamlet, no ghost. A wise gravedigger who but tests his invention. HAMLET: Is he dead? We all deserve it. OPHELIA: Not dead. Sleeping. HAMLET: Then he dreams of mortality. He unsheathes his dagger and holds it under his jaw. HAMLET: I dream of dying...to sleep no more. I dream ..of mortality..of quietus... of rest...of rest.. OPHELIA: (alarmed) It is enough to dream of it. HAMLET: By dreaming do we thus face the fatal moment more easily when it comes? He points to the grave with his dagger. HAMLET: Shall I rouse him out? Or shall I dispatch him as I did, of late, a prattling poor old man? Ophelia puts a finger to his lips. OPHELIA: No, my Prince. Let him rest. Ophelia takes the dagger from him. OPHELIA: Think of him as a guardian spirit as we here keep sweet company. HAMLET: No! It is our private space. Our little room.. OPHELIA: But one that that already has a tenant! Hamlet rises and crosses to the grave. HAMLET: Ho! Gravedigger! The Gravedigger appears and scrambles out. We have an early use for my plot, Sirrah. OPHELIA: (shocked laugh) Oh no, Hamlet! The Gravedigger says nothing. HAMLET: (furious) Is this grave not mine? GRAVEDIGGER: Perhaps. OPHELIA: Perhaps it is mine? HAMLET: (frightened) No! GRAVEDIGGER: (he looks sadly away) Perhaps - A beat. He considers the two, then gestures towards the grave, bowing. (to Ophelia) But who would deny lovers? Ophelia stares at the Gravedigger for a moment. OPHELIA: Is it a long journey - alone? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, pretty lady - like enough, but a moment shared at the embarking could make the parting softer. Ophelia puts her arms around the Gravedigger and kisses him on the cheek. OPHELIA: Thank you, friend. In another role, you might have made the journey with me. She proffers her hand to Hamlet. My Lord... Holding hands, the two climb down gently into the grave. There they embrace. HAMLET: Will you keep watch, Gravedigger? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, my Lord - tho' there's few will follow you there.. They drop out of sight. The Gravedigger stares at the grave for a time, then sits down on the earth mound, looking sadly away into the distance. After a moment, he rummages in his bag pulls out a beefbone and a pitcher of wine. He begins to eat and drink one-handed, holding onto the skull in his other hand. GRAVEDIGGER: Love. There's not much profit in that ...for gravediggers. But Lust..Ah, that's another story. In my business, the wild card, the cherry on the cake, the gilt on the gingerbread..is Lust; the random factor; the chance happening that spins the simple chaos of being alive in a new, unpredictible and, inevitably, deadly - and profitable - direction. Without lust - it's business as usual. You can, more or less, depend upon the seasons to wreak their havoc. Tenants are inevitably brought down by the fatal bite of winter, or the furnace breath of summer. Or - to coin a phrase - by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. GRAVEDIGGER: (cont'd) There's the normal harvest of plague, famine, war, and the thousand natural disasters the flesh is heir to. One usually manages to keep bread on the table ...(eats) and a little something to wash it down with. (drinks) There are pessimists in this trade who talk of the possibility of lean years. Being more the optimist myself, to them I point out that there's never been one yet. As the sun comes up - so the holes go down. But, add Lust, and you can begin digging at cockcrow and still not be done by the rising of the moon. Add Lust, and they shuffle off their mortal coils in droves. Enter Lust, and all rules, expectations and precedents go out the window. Suddenly, tenants start arriving early, and often. They are caught in rank surprise, in bed or out of it; erect and expectant, or drooped and disappointed; slaked and empty, or with smiles on their faces you would have to cut off with a knife. But arrive they do - with their drawers around their ankles, their skirts around their necks, sometimes with cross-eyed bliss on their faces, and sometimes with a dagger in their backs. They come singly, or in pairs - occasionally in threes - or, in vengeful, eye-for-an-eye clusters. They come as victims, or avengers, or as innocent bystanders caught in the deadly crossfire of lust in action. They get, and we get , no warning - but, in this trade, we know. You can smell it coming - lust. A whiff of it in the thickening air, rank as gunpowder, oppressive as summer thunderclouds. GRAVEDIGGER: (cont'd) And, if you're wise, you take heed. You sharpen your spade - and with the help of the grape - you dull your senses. Then, when you look around, as sure as taxes, the ground is covered by lust's victims. Then follow the burials. He shakes his head. (incredulous) The passions that accompany death caused by lust are like no others. They tend towards the extreme. You wouldn't believe how people carry on when they bury lust's fleshy remains. He laughs and takes a deep draught of his wine. As you will shortly come to see.. Ugly scenes! TO BLACK Act 2. Scene 2. The graveyard. The grave unattended. Enter the Player King, nervous and furtive. He walks around the graveyard. PLAYER KING: (Stage whisper) Gravedigger! No response. Old Destiny! He comes close to the open grave. Is this the one safe hiding place in Elsinore, or hopefully, a tunnel out of this pesthole? He looks down into the grave. Sees something. Ha! (softly) Ho! No response. (Very loud) HOI! GRAVEDIGGER: (voice) Would you mind! After a pause, the Gravedigger's head appears above the grave. He looks irritated and sleepy. PLAYER KING: Do you warm this cold grave, the better to receive these endangered bones, old friend? GRAVEDIGGER: (sour) No, merely to test the promise of the grave's peace. PLAYER KING: There is promise in a grave? GRAVEDIGGER: Supposedly to rest in peace. Clearly this promise does not always sustain. Wearily, the Gravedigger climbs out. PLAYER KING: Would that I could rest so easily in Elsinore. GRAVEDIGGER: 'Endangered bones', you say? PLAYER KING: Aye, my final role may be that of fugitive. The Player King catches the Gravedigger's arm What have you heard? GRAVEDIGGER: Nothing. PLAYER KING: (full drama) Is this grave mine? Have I been judged and sentenced in my discreet absence? Am I being sought out , ere now, by soldiers? Is the executioner primed, the axe honed to a scythe's edge? GRAVEDIGGER: Was your performance so bad? PLAYER KING: (deeply offended) Nay! I will not have it said. 'Gonzago' was never better played. Our plangent tragedy would have forced tears from a stony god. GRAVEDIGGER: For such a performance you must play fugitive? No Royal applause? PLAYER KING: Royal rage was our portion. (full tragic mode) Is this to be a noble player's reward for mouthing princely doggerel? GRAVEDIGGER: Ah, ha! The lines! Spoke you them not trippingly? PLAYER KING: Never were teetering pentameters so propped up by thespian artifice. So trippingly were they mouthed, so fulsome were the sentiments that they might yet see this.... throat-cutting gesture. ..taken from this. Now I, and my poor players, skulk around the castle like thieves, ducking and diving at the slightest sound of authority. A distant trumpet. The Player King catches nervously at the Gravedigger's arm. Too frightened to show...too nervous to leave. GRAVEDIGGER: How so? PLAYER KING: Your sweet Prince failed to mention that Denmark's Royal bed is couch for luxury and damned incest. How was I to know his words would cause choler in a king? GRAVEDIGGER: Thus your drama, amended by his lines, sailed you too close to real life? PLAYER KING: (droll laugh) Sailed too close? On a lee shore we were flung like a stricken barquentine upon real life's most murderous, fangy reefs. GRAVEDIGGER: (impressed) Somewhat extended, perhaps, but nonetheless a pretty metaphor... PLAYER KING: . ..for this tragic tale. The play's the thing wherein we present murder, lust, incest, slaughter, horror, bloody vengeance and perfidy but.. GRAVEDIGGER: Nothing serious? PLAYER KING: Never! Real life is too dangerous by half for we poor players! We come to present the counterfeit of life, not to be caught in the deadly intrigue of it. GRAVEDIGGER: You have too much wit.. PLAYER KING: ..to be anything but cowards. GRAVEDIGGER: Cowards survive.. PLAYER KING: Exactly! And the prize for cowardice is longevity. I am coward enough to live forever and thus avoid your spade. GRAVEDIGGER: But was there not a 'certain lady'? PLAYER KING: The need for survival tempers my most wanton actions. There are lovely women without number for whom I would most willingly die, save for that honed, judicious wisdom. GRAVEDIGGER: You subscribe to strategic withdrawal. PLAYER KING: But I absent myself from their field reluctant as any hero. GRAVEDIGGER: ..leaving wronged women strewn about every stage you play. PLAYER KING: Wronged .. as I myself have been wronged...but happy, as I am not in this present place. (full tragic mode) Is this... indicates the grave.. .. a wronged Player's only way from Elsinore? GRAVEDIGGER: It's one way, but not commonly favoured. Is the danger so great you will not stay to heed love's call? The Player King takes a quick look down the front of his breeches. PLAYER KING: Whether I go, or stay, methinks love's call heeds me yet. The Gravedigger scratches his crutch nervously. I would stay.. had she been faithful. For her - faithful -I would have most steadfastly risked the axe. GRAVEDIGGER: (wistful) She is remarkable, yes? PLAYER KING: (accusing) You know! GRAVEDIGGER: (retrieving fast) Only what I hear. The Player King is skeptical for a moment. PLAYER KING: Aye, remarkable she is. In every way. GRAVEDIGGER: Especially in country matters. PLAYER KING: Is that a question? GRAVEDIGGER: Nay! Most emphatically a question. Especially in country matters? PLAYER KING: You do know! You lying sod! GRAVEDIGGER: Neither confirm, nor deny! By the way 'sod' is good..I mean here.. (encompassing the graveyard) Very apposite! Deliberate choice of word? PLAYER KING: (cool) Of course. (snooty) A gravedigger?! GRAVEDIGGER: Steady on. PLAYER KING: Oh, nothing personal. It's just the thought of her being with...,well, you know..a gravedigger. GRAVEDIGGER: A man has to live. PLAYER KING: Don't take offence. As Gravediggers go, you're the very paragon. The Gravedigger is slightly mollified. Ah! But you do not exaggerate her skill in country matters. It must be Royal Denmark's arctic clime that makes her so warm...so very.. ..gropes for the right word.. GRAVEDIGGER: Expert? PLAYER KING: (unconvinced) M'm'm'.. GRAVEDIGGER: Enthusiastic? PLAYER KING: M'm'm'm'm'..Most are enthusiastic. That is a given. I have a way with them.. GRAVEDIGGER: Imaginative? PLAYER KING: M'm'm'. Better, I grant you. Imaginative she is. GRAVEDIGGER: Six out of ten? PLAYER KING: Five. GRAVEDIGGER: Five and a half, surely? PLAYER KING: Done. GRAVEDIGGER: Willing? PLAYER KING: (unconvinced) M' m' yes....Willing is nearer.. ..a long beat for inspiration.. GRAVEDIGGER: (assaying nervously) Grubby? PLAYER KING: (deeply, almost orgasmically impressed) Grubby!? Oh, grubby's very good. Very, very good. GRAVEDIGGER: (modest ) I so felt..especially in relation to country matters. PLAYER KING: (savouring ) Grubby. Nothing could be more apposite. GRAVEDIGGER: Sums her up, would you say? PLAYER KING: Perfectly. What an ear you have! Are you sure you want to go on being a gravedigger? GRAVEDIGGER: It's my destiny. PLAYER KING: Digging holes in this ghastly country isn't destiny! It's simply a bad habit. You deserve better. You're not like other men here. Have you noticed? They're all much taken by their sour view that women are pernicious. GRAVEDIGGER: Aye! They rail against them, yet seek them out as a greedy miner does a seam of gold, preferably in the dark and on all fours. PLAYER KING: Exactly! All this lust. Elsinore's air is rank with it, like the scent of flesh caught in the skirts of a mad harlot. Is it this foul Northern climate? GRAVEDIGGER: A contributing factor. He drives the spade into the ground. GRAVEDIGGER: (cont'd) The ground is hard.. the beds soft. PLAYER KING: The women willing. They consider, and in unison, sigh deeply. QUEEN: (off) Yoo-hoo, Gravedigger! PLAYER KING: (accusing, admiring) You lied! The Gravedigger shrugs. The two jump down into the grave. Enter the Queen. QUEEN: Yoo-hoo... She crosses immediately to the grave, looks down into it and smiles like a tiger. How Scandinavian. A smorgarsbord! Gracefully, she steps down into the grave. The lights dim...time passes. Act 2. Scene 4. The Graveyard. From out of the grave come Ophelia and Hamlet. Ophelia kisses Hamlet tenderly. She stares into his face for a long moment, then walks off, looking back sadly. Hamlet sits down on the earth mound by the grave and picks up a skull. He stares at it, fixedly. Then, the Player King comes from the grave. He assists the Queen to step out from it, the Gravedigger pushing from behind. There is a brief dumbshow of their parting: kisses and lascivious embraces. Then the Player King and the Queen walk off, hand-in-hand, eye-to-eye. The Gravedigger adjusts his clothes and grins. GRAVEDIGGER: Let the cannons to the heavens speak! Having been so sweetly put upon, I have prov'd most Royally. A deep sigh. There is something almost profound about such wanton excess of enthusiasm. Looking weary, the Gravedigger sits down beside Hamlet on the mound. Hamlet address the skull. HAMLET: Speak, Chameleon! GRAVEDIGGER: He's long in the habit of silence, my lord. HAMLET: He has the look about him of someone taken in lust. GRAVEDIGGER: Then he was from Elsinore. HAMLET: (amused) Aye, you read us well. There's a vicious mole of nature working here. What say you, Gravedigger? Was this once a false lover? A cuckolder of husbands? a philanderer? a pervert? a pander? GRAVEDIGGER: All of the above, my lord. He was but an ordinary man...and from Elsinore. HAMLET: Then you think we are all lust's creatures? GRAVEDIGGER: So my observation would have it, my lord. HAMLET: If these grinning chops had a tongue, Gravedigger, what would he sing? Of country matters? GRAVEDIGGER: Of drabbing.. HAMLET: Paddling.. GRAVEDIGGER: Fondling.. HAMLET: Lechery.. GRAVEDIGGER: Wantonness.. HAMLET: Of skirts hoist up.. GRAVEDIGGER: Of breeches hauled down.. HAMLET: (anger growing) Of uncles incestuous.. GRAVEDIGGER: Of kisses, lascivious.. HAMLET: Of mother's licentious.. GRAVEDIGGER: Of funeral baked meats.. HAMLET: Of o'er hasty wedding feasts.. GRAVEDIGGER: Of murder.. HAMLET: (wild) Of madness! Trumpets play a slow fanfare. What's this? The dumbshow enters. The King queen, laertes and the player king in procession carrying the body of ophelia. Hamlet drops the skull and rises. HAMLET: Ophelia? GRAVEDIGGER: Ophelia! THEY LOWER OPHELIA'S BODY TO THE GROUND BESIDE THE GRAVE. ONE BY ONE THEY KISS HER DEAD CHEEK. PLAYER KING (sings) 'They bore her barefaced on the bier, Hey non nonny nonny Hey nonny And in her grave rain'd many a tear, Hey nonny nonny no' THEY BEGIN TO LOWER HER INTO THE GRAVE. LAERTES LEAPS IN AFTER THE BODY AND EMBRACES OPHELIA , ANGUISHED. HAMLET LEAPS IN AFTER HIM AND THROWING LAERTES ASIDE EMBRACES OPHELIA'S BODY. HAMLET: I loved Ophelia! GRAVEDIGGER: He delivered that line well. Assiduous practice! HAMLET AND LAERTES FIGHT. PLAYER KING (sings) 'Not forty thousand brothers could, Hey non nonny nonny Hey nonny Grieve for her as Hamlet could, Hey nonny nonny no.' HAMLET AND LAERTES ARE PULLED APART. OPHELIA IN FINALLY LAID IN THE GRAVE. ALL STRIKE POSES OF GRIEF. The Gravedigger begins to fill in the grave very slowly. THE QUEEN, HAMLET AND THE PLAYER KING LEAVE IN DRAMATIC SORROW. Claudius and Laertes move to the front of the stage, conspiratorial. The Gravedigger strains to hear. CLAUDIUS: With a little shuffling you may choose a sword unbated and, in a pass of practice, requite him for your father. LAERTES: I will do it and for that purpose I'll anoint my sword with a mortal unction I got from a mountebank, thus, if I gall him e'en slightly, it will be death. CLAUDIUS: If this should fail I'll have prepared for him a chalice... They exit, talking.. Immediately, the Player King enters. PLAYER KING; What did you learn? GRAVEDIGGER: That lust provides employment.....and heralds more for the morrow. PLAYER KING: (airily) So, Ophelia's drowning is not without profit even for you, my friend. A client now, and the prospect of a lucrative harvest. The Gravedigger stares at him, horrified. GRAVEDIGGER: 'Ophelia's drowning is not without profit even for me'? She? Drowned? (remembering) 'A death by drowning...a wager of barbary steeds'. You don't mean Fortinbras...? The Player King shakes his hand, warningly. PLAYER KING: 'Don't even think it! The Gravedigger, distracted, begins to dig earth out of the grave. GRAVEDIGGER; That's appalling! PLAYER KING: That's politics. Remember, the only safe cure for the deadly malady of knowing too much, is silence. Claudius re-appears. The Player King rushes off. Claudius crosses to the grave and looks down into it. CLAUDIUS: Is this not the fair Ophelia's grave? GRAVEDIGGER: (savage, and bitter, throughout) Aye, so it is. She that was drowned. CLAUDIUS: Then why do you dig it out? GRAVEDIGGER: To make a fresh grave. CLAUDIUS: For whom do you dig anew? GRAVEDIGGER: (considerable satisfaction) For you, sire. CLAUDIUS: For me? How can this be? A shared grave? Travel we now heavenwards in company? GRAVEDIGGER: (a skeptical laugh) Heavenwards, sire? Do you have such expectation? CLAUDIUS: (ruffled) Travel we in company in any direction? GRAVEDIGGER: We do not share the grave's journey, sire. But we all travel the one track, head to toe, the way fishes go. The grave is a common hole that stretches forever downwards to the round earth's fiery centre. CLAUDIUS: And must we all lie in it? GRAVEDIGGER: As she does, so shall you. CLAUDIUS: What lies in wait there? GRAVEDIGGER: Our just desserts, sire. CLAUDIUS: How came innocent Ophelia to this? Was it by accidental drowning as some would have it? GRAVEDIGGER: 'Accidental drowning' sire, is that what they say? (cynical laugh) Nay, sire. She came to it by lust. CLAUDIUS: By lust!? In one so innocent? GRAVEDIGGER: Not her lust, sire. Yours. (sudden fury) CLAUDIUS: (shocked) This the deadly outcome of my much remarked marriage? GRAVEDIGGER: How could you think otherwise? The jagged, incestuous stone you cast into the smooth pool of Elsinore has an outward force that can raise deadly waves on distant shores. CLAUDIUS: Why, Gravedigger, there's a metaphor to conjure. GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, sire, sometimes I find myself waxing lyrical in the face of coming employment. CLAUDIUS: So you see my coming death? GRAVEDIGGER: (a wolfish smile) I would wager on it, sire. TO BLACK Act 2. Scene 4. GHOST: (voice) Remember me... Remember me... Lights The graveyard. The Gravedigger and the Player King are sitting on the ground huddling from the cold in their cloaks,sharing a bottle. PLAYER KING: Miserable hole, Denmark. Remember the sun?...That bright, round warming thing in the sky? It's present in all the Italian plays. GRAVEDIGGER: Then why are you and your players so unseasonally in Elsinore? PLAYER KING: The truth is, friend - we ran out of venues. Estimable performers as we are, there's still a limit. GRAVEDIGGER: To audience tolerance? PLAYER KING: (sadly) Aye. And then there's the repertoire.. GRAVEDIGGER: It gives out? PLAYER KING: At about the same time as the hospitality. More than one performance in the same place in the same season and the welcome becomes as thin as...as... GRAVEDIGGER: ..boarding-house soup? PLAYER KING: (darkly) The last place didn't even stretch to soup. (full drama) Oh, how I wish that I, and my poor starveling company had never come to this blighted place! GRAVEDIGGER: Hamlet, on the other hand wishes that he had never left it. PLAYER KING: It's alright for him. He came back a prince. GRAVEDIGGER: But he left..a prince with prospects. The incumbant.. PLAYER KING: . is redundant.....and now? GRAVEDIGGER: He is, by his uncle..replaced. PLAYER KING: Out-placed GRAVEDIGGER: Dis-placed. PLAYER KING: Dis-employed. GRAVEDIGGER: Re-deployed PLAYER KING: Re-routed.. GRAVEDIGGER: 'Re-routed' is good...Bagged..Fired.. PLAYER KING: Canned.. GRAVEDIGGER: Terminated.. PLAYER KING: Let go.. GRAVEDIGGER: Given the boot.. PLAYER KING: The old heave-ho.. GRAVEDIGGER: The big A.. PLAYER KING: By being in Wittenberg.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..by being out of town at the wrong time.. PLAYER KING: ..by not covering his rear.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..he finds himself.. PLAYER KING: ..Unemployed.. GRAVEDIGGER: (shakes his head) Unemployable.. PLAYER KING: So much for a university education.. But how can this be? Since I only play kings, I've never bothered to read up the rules of kingly succession. It just never comes up in plots. I don't quite understand why Hamlet didn't succeed his father. Wouldn't that be normal? GHOST: (voice) A deed most foul. PLAYER KING: Pardon me? GHOST: (voice) A carnal act.. PLAYER KING: Carnal? That's putting it a bit strong, isn't it? GRAVEDIGGER: (gritting his teeth. He knows the voice) I didn't say anything. PLAYER KING: (nervous) I rather thought you did. GHOST: (voice) A bloody act.. The Player King is now very nervous indeed. PLAYER KING: Bloody? GRAVEDIGGER: (whispering) I still didn't say anything. The Ghost rises from the grave. GHOST: An unnatural act. PLAYER KING: (rising swiftly) I have a rehearsal.. GHOST: Stay! The Player King sits down, hastily.. PLAYER KING: (nervous laugh) Doesn't matter. I know the lines. One advantage of a limited repertoire. (to the Gravedigger) I say, does this sort of thing happen very often? The Gravedigger says nothing. The Ghost stretches elaborately. GHOST: Like you, Good Player, I never have understood why Hamlet, my son, does not now stand in my illustrious place. The rules are clear. PLAYER KING: Certainly, in the dozens, nay hundreds of kingly parts I've played, sons follow fathers to the throne. GHOST: That's it exactly.. A beat. As far as I know. GRAVEDIGGER: (incredulous) You, the King.. PLAYER KING: .. late king.. GRAVEDIGGER: You..the late king...(shouting) DON'T KNOW!? GHOST: As a matter of fact, no. Never paid much attention. That sort of thing simply doesn't come up. One just goes about one's kingly business. Took it for granted, you see. One would, wouldn't one? PLAYER KING: Be right on the night, so to speak. GHOST: Exactly. GRAVEDIGGER: Only it wasn't. GHOST: I can see that now. It just goes to show. One can't trust anyone. One tries to do the right thing.. GRAVEDIGGER: Look the other way.. PLAYER KING: Turn the other cheek? GHOST: Life a clean life... PLAYER KING: (aside to Gravedigger) Ah. That may have been his problem. GRAVEDIGGER: (to Player King) His clean life? PLAYER KING: For 'clean', read 'boring'. GRAVEDIGGER: Quite. GHOST: And before one can say.. GRAVEDIGGER: Knife. GHOST: Knife? GRAVEDIGGER: Yes. Before one can say knife.. GHOST: (puzzled) Why did you say that? Knife? GRAVEDIGGER: It just felt right. GHOST: (weighs it up) Before one can say knife? Yes, it does, rather...feel right. (admiring) I would never have used knife there. PLAYER KING: He has a way with words. GRAVEDIGGER: Didn't mean to interrupt your flow. Sorry. GHOST: Don't be. I'm impressed. GRAVEDIGGER: (modest) Lateral thinking. PLAYER KING: Talented fellow. Wasted as a gravedigger. GHOST: I can see that. Although I must say, he didn't do a bad job with me. Before one can say knife . (sudden outrage) .. some bastard's made off with the silver! GRAVEDIGGER: And the crown. GHOST: Aye, one regrets that. GRAVEDIGGER: And the kingdom. GHOST: Aye, one regrets that. GRAVEDIGGER: And the power. GHOST: Aye, one regrets that. GRAVEDIGGER: And the pageantry. GHOST: Aye, one regrets that. PLAYER KING: And the Queen.. A very long silence. GHOST: One really must be getting back. That damned bird is going to start crowing in a minute. Get's on one's nerves, so it does. I'll take my leave. He descends into the grave. Remember me.. Out of sight. (voice) Remember me.. A cock crows a brief, strangled cry. PLAYER KING: (shaken) Nice fellow. GRAVEDIGGER: In Elsinore..when one is a nice fellow, one finishes here. ..indicates the grave.. GRAVEDIGGER: (cont'd) This place is full of nice fellows. PLAYER KING: Would one like a steadying drink? GRAVEDIGGER: One would. He swallows deeply, smiles and hands back the bottle. PLAYER KING: The thespian in me senses the need for a climax about this point in the proceedings, wouldn't you agree? GRAVEDIGGER: Dramatically, it's practically unavoidable, but climaxes in Elsinore are best avoided. They tend to be... PLAYER KING: Fatal? GRAVEDIGGER: Poisonous. And then fatal. The Player King drinks. PLAYER KING: (musing) There's talk of a pass of rapiers..of kingly wagers on Laertes skill. GRAVEDIGGER: (bitter) Barbary steeds, wasn't it? PLAYER KING: Aye. Odd plotting, all the same... I would have thought Hamlet could defend himself? There are reports of his masterly skill with sword and dagger. GRAVEDIGGER: (laughs, cynical) But the rapiers may not be...if you'll pardon the pun.. the point. Were I him, I should peruse the foils for signs of the Bloat King's.. PLAYER KING: ...ingeniousness? GRAVEDIGGER: Attention to detail. I vaguely remember something about 'envenomed swords'. Your clients don't do things by halves. PLAYER KING: ..which puts you in the way of some extra custom. GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, and should deliver you your climax. GRAVEDIGGER: Is he doomed? PLAYER KING: Hamlet? Aye. It is written. GRAVEDIGGER: (proffers the flask, smiling) A sip of hemlock? They stare at each other. A slow fade TO BLACK Act 2. Scene 5. The graveyard. From the grave, earth is flying. The gravedigger is digging frantically. Enter OSRIC, the courtier. He carries a pair of swords. He moves to the grave and picks up a skull. Looks inside it, finds nothing, looks thoughtful. OSRIC: Ah, fellow.. The Gravedigger doesn't stop. There's a deadline approaching. OSRIC: You! - Sirrah! The Gravedigger stops. He regards the beauteous Osric with skepticism. He looks back over one shoulder, then back over the other, then points to himself. OSRIC: (contempt) Yes, you, churl. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside, amused) Fellow? Sirrah? Churl? He scrambles out of the grave. OSRIC tosses the skull to the Gravedigger, who catches it. OSRIC: Whose grave is that, dolt? GRAVEDIGGER: (aside, mock impressed) 'Dolt' is good! It has a ring to it. (savage) Not yours, Sir Waterfly....Not yours.. Not yet. You've come a touch too soon. OSRIC: Too soon? The Gravedigger throws the skull back to Osric who juggles it, awkwardly. GRAVE DIGGER: (ice-cold) Would you care to leave a message? Fill another empty head with intelligence? So far you've managed only the death by drowning. What happened to the wager of barbary steeds.....the pass at arms...the hemlock and the envenomed swords?' Are you falling behind schedule? OSRIC opens and closes his mouth, astounded. OSRIC: Out of my way, peasant. I have important business. He attempts to brush past the Gravedigger, who grabs him by the collar. GRAVEDIGGER: (accusing) Your kind of business belongs here. Sir Worm. ..indicates graveyard. Anyway, you cannot enter. OSRIC: (bewildered) Cannot enter? GRAVEDIGGER: Those passports you carry are not yours. OSRIC: Passports? GRAVEDIGGER: Aye, in your hand. OSRIC: These, dollard, are French swords. GRAVEDIGGER: (shaking his head, firmly) Passports. OSRIC: (laughs uneasily) You speak in riddles. These are French rapiers, complete with assigns, girdles, hangers and so on.. He draws his rapier and he makes and elaborate lunge at the Gravedigger, who is unimpressed. - very responsive to the hilts... Another pass, even more elaborate, and closer.. - most delicate carriages.. another pass, very close. - and of very liberal conceit. Casually, the Gravedigger siezes the blade and hands the sword, hilt first to Osric who is shaken and made fearful. GRAVEDIGGER: Passports. For the two who, by using them, will shortly make a journey.... indicates grave.. ..here. OSRIC: (satisfied) Hamlet. GRAVEDIGGER: And Laertes. Osric. And Laertes? What makes you think that?! GRAVEDIGGER: (a ghastly smile) Because I know such things, Sir Waterfly, Sir Worm, Sir Maggot. You see, I am the Customs Officer of that bourne from which no traveller returns. OSRIC: (frightened now, backing away) Oh. (seeking assurance) And you say I've come much too soon? GRAVEDIGGER: (another ghastly smile) No..that's not what I said, at all. I said, 'you've come a touch too soon. He holds the blade of his spade against the side of Osric's neck. Osric backs away dangerous as a spider. Suddenly he turns and is gone. The Gravedigger perfectly apes his mincing run for a few steps, then stops and watches him go. Abruptly, he starts shovelling furiously once more. TO BLACK A long silence. Sounds off: the play of swords in a duel. The shouts of spectators, applause. (Voices off) OSRIC: A hit! A very palpable hit! Sword blades clash again. Applause. LAERTES: A touch, a touch - I do confess it. Applause. The play of steel on steel. QUEEN: Oh, my dear Hamlet. The drink, the drink! I am poisoned! Cries of horror. The clash of blades. OSRIC: They bleed on both sides. LAERTES: I am justly killed with mine own treachery. Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good. The King..the King's to blame! HAMLET: Then venom - to work! Follow my mother! KING: Aaaaaaargh! HAMLET: Aaaaaaargh! VOICE: Goodnight, sweet Prince.. Act 2. Scene 6. Lights. The Gravedigger and the Player King sits on the mound of earth. side by side. GRAVEDIGGER: Did you hear all that? Do you know what that means? Work! Work, work, work. I'll be here, shovelling them into the ground until the moon rises. PLAYER KING: I' faith - it's a high price to pay for passion. GRAVEDIGGER: It's real life. PLAYER KING: But where's the merit in it? We players, unmarked by murder, lust, incest, foul revenge, etcetera etcetera, run our emotions out, die our impressive deaths, then peel off our wigs, gowns and paint, load our cart, and wheel it towards the next square meal, the next - generally paltry - audience and, hopefully, the occasional sympathetic burst of applause. Laertes, wearing a shroud, walks across the rear, then moves to the grave, steps into it and goes down, out of sight. GRAVEDIGGER: Odious fellow. PLAYER KING: I agree. But, in tragedy, one needs minor villains for plot purposes. He's typical of the slimy creatures who play dupes of the powerful etcetera. They add a... GRAVEDIGGER: ..a subtext of repugnance to the whole? PLAYER KING: I couldn't have expressed it better. GRAVEDIGGER: Would you renew his contract? PLAYER KING: Bit players prepared to travel are hard to find. They are generally wife-beaters, child molesters, or lawyers. But, for minor parts one cannot be a chooser. GRAVEDIGGER: But is it necessary to flesh them out with such ugly characteristics? PLAYER KING: Again, convention. And that one had a special problem. His good looks, I fear, would have suited him for the more heroic roles - which normally.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..you play.. PLAYER KING: Naturally. You are perceptive, you know. All the same, I feel sorrow for him. He's like the rest of these poor wights; one brief turn on the boards and he becomes your fodder, Old Cannon. For them the play is over; no encores, no reprises, no epilogues. They perform their one brief, usually ill-written part and are consumed by it. GRAVEDIGGER: Well, there's a certain commercial merit in that. PLAYER KING: I know you see profit in all this, but burying people does seem to have given rise in you to a rather narrow view of life. GRAVEDIGGER: A view as wide as any grave. PLAYER KING: There you go..necrophilic imagery again! If you're not careful, people will come to think of you, my shovelling friend, as a kind of alimentary canal through which we all must pass. GRAVEDIGGER: When you are passed, old friend, I will lay you out in a god-like pose; depend upon it. PLAYER KING: Your macabre humour does not dissuade me from the view that we players have the best of it. For someone of my versatility, there is no limit. I have DIED tragically, at the last count, one thousand and twelve most satisfactory deaths; have WON, by dint of my regal bearing and majestic speechifying, six hundred and nine Queens (including five Helen of Troy, written with various degrees of distinction); have REVENGED, with utmost bloodiness, three hundred and six murders most foul, and yet, here I am, ready to start afresh, unmarked save by the regretful onset of Time. GRAVEDIGGER: And a dose of Love's pox.. Can't help thinking, though, that it's a pity about the girl. PLAYER KING: (shrugs) That's life, so you keep telling me. GRAVEDIGGER: That's death, actually. Odd, though.Young women are always the victims in plays. Why is that? PLAYER KING: A convention. Nothing more. There are few good, fruity parts for young women..wronged virgins..unrequited lovers..put-upon maidservants..that kind of thing..but what else can they play? One might as well cast them as victims. The Player King shrugs, 'couldn't care-less'. The dead Claudius enters, walks to the grave, steps down into it and goes out of sight. PLAYER KING: Now him, I envy. GRAVEDIGGER: Envy him? PLAYER KING: Aye, for he revelled in her sweet embrace for longer than I. Night after night.. wallowing in her like a...like a... GRAVEDIGGER: Like a... PLAYER KING: (a restraining hand) Stay! This one is mine. Like a..wait for it..wait for it..it's coming..it's coming..Like a sleeky, wet-lipped porpentine paddling in the warm billowy tides of love! GRAVEDIGGER: Of lust more like. PLAYER KING: Alright.. of lust. All the better. GRAVEDIGGER: But, in fairness, a handsome metaphor. Yours? PLAYER KING: (modest) Yes...but she must take some credit. Not all, of course, but some. She brings out the poet in me. GRAVEDIGGER: (aside) In him, poetry: in me, a rash. The Queen enters, walks to the grave, steps down into it, and goes out of sight. PLAYER KING: (moved) By Hecuba! There's a role I could write for her I would lief see her play a thousand times. The Gravedigger rubs his crutch instinctively. GRAVEDIGGER: Speaking of which...how are you? PLAYER KING: (rubbing his) I suspect the condition may match my affection for that lady, inasmuch it may be lifelong. The Gravedigger grimaces. GRAVEDIGGER: You think so? The Player King nods, unconcerned. PLAYER KING: Everything has to be paid for. GRAVEDIGGER: In a better ordered world, the terms of the repayments would not exceed the length of the pleasure. Hamlet enters, walks backwards to the grave, steps down into it and goes out of sight. GRAVEDIGGER: Did he see a ghost on the battlements, think you? PLAYER KING: (contemptuous) In his head. GRAVEDIGGER: All the same, there was a certain flight-of- angels nobility about him, don't you agree? PLAYER KING: He was a trouble-maker. GRAVEDIGGER: That's the problem with being a prince. There's nothing for them to do. PLAYER KING: So ,like most people who have nothing better to do, he began to write... And so badly. Really! Those lines of his were unspeakable. Now young Fortinbras is altogether better with words, even when he's speaking with his tongue firmly wedged in his cheek, How about...'Let four captains bear Hamlet' . Wasn't that splendid! And,'He was like, had he been put upon, to have proved most royally'. - great public phrase-making! GRAVEDIGGER: But, he barely managed to keep a straight face when he said: 'With sorrow I embrace my fortune' . PLAYER KING: Of course he found it amusing. That was the whole point of the exercise. Fortinbras embracing his fortune. His gesture encompasses all Elsinore. GRAVEDIGGER: So he is the real story? PLAYER KING: Of course! Who else? The prime cause...the Eminence Grise...the Puppetmaster. He milked their Royal propensity for lust as he would a milch cow. GRAVEDIGGER: So all this has been about him? PLAYER KING: ...and for him and by him...as will ever be. GRAVEDIGGER: And you knew?... PLAYER KING: ...from the beginning. GRAVEDIGGER: And here's me thinking you're an actor. Player King: My dear fellow, I am an actor; first, last and always. This other is mere moonlighting. We actors make excellent spies. We're as anonymous as furniture. Everyone thinks we're stupid, or queer.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..or both.. PLAYER KING: ..and...we have the advantage of mobility. We can cross frontiers.. we can rub shoulders ... GRAVEDIGGER: ...and other bits of one's anatomy.... PLAYER KING: ...with the great and the powerful.. Keep your eyes and ears open..write the odd report.. undertake small errands... here a word, there a whisper..and before you can say.... GRAVEDIGGER: ...nothing is quite like it seems... PLAYER KING: ....a second income. GRAVEDIGGER: That's disgusting! PLAYER KING: 'Disgusting'? Try starving. The Player King holds out his hand to the Gravedigger. PLAYER KING: Ah, but now Elsinore's open portcullis beckons, so I must pass through it, Old Gates of Doom, before you take a fancy to this ageing corpus. And so... He embraces the Gravedigger with a great bear hug. ....farewell. GRAVEDIGGER: (chagrined) No doubt we'll meet again... Next season? The Player King laughs heartily. PLAYER KING: Depend upon it, friend. I have half an hundred parts to play before I ape your sad guests of honour. Again, farewell..You are a veritable prince amongst men! The PLAYER KING kisses the Gravedigger roundly on the forehead and strides off, singing. Hey, nonny nonny, nonny nonny no... The Gravedigger watches him go, then picks up his spade and slowly begins to fill in the grave. He stops. Rubs his arms against the cold; eases his back. Suddenly depressed. GRAVEDIGGER: Hate it when they go...the Players. Their annual visits chime my life away. Suddenly, winter stretches ahead like the toothache. He digs a bit more. Hah! What a terrible life, eh? A strolling player...no regular pay..no prospects... no future.. He is unconvinced. He hits a pose, then sags. Wouldn't mind a spot of travelling, though. Behind him, there appears, OSRIC, who stops for a moment checking out that there is no one else around, then begins to ease his way towards the Gravedigger, using the gravestones for cover, unsheathing his sword as he comes. A spadeful... Went to the next village once. What a fun place! They had a village idiot they used to stone on Saturday nights. It was so exciting! Upset me for months, so it did - having to come home. A spadeful. He assays a song: Hey, nonny nonny, nonny nonny no... ..and is somewhat impressed by the sound of his own voice. A couple more spadefuls... Fancy having to sing in public...Awful! All the same...must be fun that..costumes, makeup..poncing about.... Strikes another pose... 'None wed the second, but who killed the first.' OSRIC creeps closer..He is within a yard of his victim when... The Player King reappears. OSRIC wheels around and scuttles off...unseen by both. PLAYER KING: It occurs to me that you, having offended a certain courtier.. GRAVEDIGGER: ..the Norwegian tart? PLAYER KING: ...more accurately, the Norwegian assassin.... The Gravedigger is astonished by this. You, my friend, would be well advised to come with us. GRAVEDIGGER: What? Where? PLAYER KING: South. Where the sun is. Where the soup is thick. Where there is soup. GRAVEDIGGER: I can't leave here. I've got a job to do. PLAYER KING: What? Planting customers? GRAVEDIGGER: Someone has to do it. PLAYER KING: Why does it have to be you? You're not indispensable, are you? The Gravedigger considers this for a long moment. GRAVEDIGGER: I can't. It's what I do. PLAYER KING: But, don't you see? The same thing is going to happen to you as happened to all these other poor stiffs....these customers of yours. PLAYER KING:(cont;d) One morning you'll wake up - still a gravedigger - and find you've run out of lines. GRAVEDIGGER: (defensive) It's a living. And the work's not without interest - as you have just witnessed. PLAYER KING: If you're into conspiracy theory, or the macabre. The Gravedigger is miffed by this. PLAYER KING: Don't you sometimes get a teensy-weensy sense of repeating yourself? The Gravedigger says nothing. Don't you ever want to do something else? Be something else? Be someone else. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life filling in little holes? GRAVEDIGGER: It's honest work. PLAYER KING: So is being a whore. GRAVEDIGGER: (musing, intrigued) Be someone else? PLAYER KING: Be whoever you choose. Anyone. GRAVEDIGGER: (testing) A king? PLAYER KING: Why not? When they're not losing their thrones..or their heads..they have most of the fun. GRAVEDIGGER: A queen? PLAYER KING: Well, in my company, there's a bit of competition for those parts, but, if that's your inclination, fine. PLAYER KING: (cont'd) Be the back end of a horse if you like. The thing is...you'll get to choose. The poor devils you're about to plant never got to choose what they were. They just were. They never questioned their roles. They turned up for life every day...then one day, they turned up here.. GRAVEDIGGER: One part..one set of lines. Limited, I agree.. PLAYER KING: Repeating themselves ad nauseum..from the cradle to...... GRAVEDIGGER: .....a hole in the ground. (musing) Who tever I want to be? PLAYER KING: Whoever..whatever..I promise. GRAVEDIGGER: (testing) A liontamer? PLAYER KING: I just happen to have a liontamer part the greatest thespians would kill for. GRAVEDIGGER: (genuinely surprised) Really? PLAYER KING: Get tired of lion-taming..chuck it in and be someone else. GRAVEDIGGER: Just like that? The Player King shrugs happily, getting through. PLAYER KING: (snaps his fingers) Just like that... GRAVEDIGGER: But would I have to start in small roles? PLAYER KING: Well. it's a trade like any other. GRAVEDIGGER: No, I'm too old. The Gravedigger goes back to digging. PLAYER KING: Too old! How long do you think your broad back can last, grubbing around in this icy soil? Gravediggers don't last. It's a well known fact. But actors! Don't you see, man, what an astute choice of profession acting is? The thing is: there's always a part. And with your skill with words, you can simply write for yourself ever more mature roles. GRAVEDIGGER: It's too risky...learning a new profession at my age. PLAYER KING: Nonsense! You'll pick up acting in a minute. GRAVEDIGGER: You really think so? PLAYER KING: Of course you will. GRAVEDIGGER: Do I get to sing? PLAYER KING: (without enthusiasm) Why not? GRAVEDIGGER: Dance? The Player King drops into a brief soft shoe routine. The Gravedigger tries his hand. PLAYER KING: Hey! Not bad. Not bad at all! A beat. Come with us The Gravedigger looks around. GRAVEDIGGER: Naw! It's too risky. You said yourself you were running out of venues. PLAYER KING: That's here. But the South. GRAVEDIGGER: The sun? (wistful) PLAYER KING: Every day it shines..warming your skin like a nubile maid! GRAVEDIGGER: The soup? (serious interest) PLAYER KING: Around Perugia they do a simply wondrous, fart-inducing bean soup. M'm'm'm! I can taste it! I can smell it! The Gravedigger opens his mouth to say something.. PLAYER KING: (Getting in first) The soup! Come! A new circuit! A new repertoire! A new life! You , wordsmith, can write us all some new material..and for yourself, create any part you choose to play. GRAVEDIGGER: (eager) The back end of a horse? PLAYER KING: (aside) Such ambition! Why not? Perish the thought, you might even want to play a gravedigger! The world - mon cheri - your own destiny is yours for the scribbling. The Gravedigger spades a small amount of earth into the hole, then stands up straight, almost convinced. GRAVEDIGGER: Shall I bring my spade? PLAYER KING: No! Leave it for the next fellow. Burn your bridges! Take a chance! GRAVEDIGGER: But what if I don't like it? PLAYER KING: For the actor, gravedigging is the perfect alternative trade. Even in the South, people need burying..especially critics! GRAVEDIGGER: There's that. PLAYER KING: So - say 'farewell' to this clammy, dank and miserable hole. The Gravedigger addresses the grave, lamely. GRAVEDIGGER: Farewell. PLAYER KING: No no no no no! The Player King grabs the Gravedigger and turns him to face the audience. PLAYER KING: To your audience! From now on, you'll always have an audience. Think on that! Never a syllable wasted on the empty air. Say 'farewell' properly - with Drama. The Player King strikes an heroic pose of 'farewell'. PLAYER KING: Farewell! The Gravedigger strikes a similar pose, then, by observation, adjusts it to full dramatic shape. GRAVEDIGGER: Like this? PLAYER KING: Very good! Like I told you, you're a natural. Now say it. GRAVEDIGGER: Farewell! PLAYER KING: A turning point in your life and you mumble 'farewell' like a sacked clerk! No! Once more - with feeling. GRAVEDIGGER: Farewell!!!!! PLAYER KING: Splendid! You're getting the hang of this, already. The Player King readjusts his pose. PLAYER KING: Now, very important....the exeunt. Mark me. Further adjustments. With style. With dignity. Like this - the hero moving bravely to meet his destiny... The Player King makes a stately and tragic exit. As he nears the wings: PLAYER KING: Farewell! (grandly) GRAVEDIGGER: You sure this is going to work? PLAYER KING: (arrogant confidence) Trust me. I'm an impressario. A blank moment of goggling doubt from the Gravedigger shared with the audience. The Player King exits. The Gravedigger watches him go. Shrugs. GRAVEDIGGER: To go, or not to go? Well, at least we've resolved that question, haven't we? Why not? Why the hell not? He re-strikes the pose, splendidly, encompassing the whole audience with his gaze. And so..... He bows, deeply. ......farewell. He makes a stately and grand exit, then trips and tumbles out of sight, into the wings. The lights slowly fades on the graveyard and the open grave. END 1 37