Act 2.1
(Dark stage)
King Hamlet:
(Screams) Where is Hamlet?
(Lights bump to full. Two guards stand on opposite sides of the door to the king’s bedroom.)
Lucas:
What was that?
Christian:
It was a cry, and by and by, we will hear such like again.
Lucas:
But such a cry. It must descry a man full deep in pain.
Christian:
It will prove true, as each night such cries do, but you are new beside me. Others come and others go; they simply can’t abide with me. The king has dreams, and from them seems a power to make his screaming. If he speaks, he will then seek, to involve us in his dreaming. It’s a fearsome place, and it’s no disgrace to avoid at all cost of entry. If you cannot serve his need just then, it’s
best to leave him empty.
Lucas:
But he’s the king, and I have seen the nobility in his character.
Christian:
The noble man is not immune from a mind-deluded disaster.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Christian:
The scream is not the man himself, the one that you have known. In the night when disaster dreams do come, that man, for brief, is gone. That is a secret that we hold, each one who works this watch. The sights and sounds that we’ve seen and heard we hold and not dispatch. All Denmark must be preserved from these nightly deviations. The people must never know and see the king in his privations.
Lucas:
Do not the people have the right to know what their king must suffer?
Christian:
That might lead them into doubts, and from that fear we buffer.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Christian:
We though the birth of his son would ease his troubled mind. In the intervening fifteen years we have all seen his decline. From day to day and night to night, sadly he’s descended, and now you hear and now you see how it all has ended.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Lucas:
I cannot stand to see and hear this noble soul suffer in so dark a hole. Can any hell be worse than this to let a fine mind go amiss?
Christian:
You must decide if you can abide the suffering that you hear. The king must know that others hold and always someone’s near. He may call at any time, and I will go therein. You will stay, and keep away, any nosey lookers in. The king is like a child at night afraid of his own darkness. To expose him to the world to see would be cruel and deeply heartless. He rules each day in sanity; at night he lives with terror. I do not speak in vanity. I say to expose him would come in error.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Lukas:
Now I know why they come and go and still all hold to silence. To speak of this would go amiss and expose him to great violence.
King:
Christian, Christian, come and comfort me, I am lost somewhere in dreams.
Christian:
Thus it comes to me each night and go on it seems. Lukas hold here to this post unless by me are bidden. I must go and soon uncover what herein is hidden.
Lucas:
Christian, I will stand and hold this night, and I will do so with persistence. But I cannot tell if I can abide this hell each night as with your brave consistence.
Christian:
Thank you your for stalwart stand and for your true bravery. We can only act in conscience here. We cannot serve in slavery.
King:
Where is Hamlet?
Christian;
I enter and I go therein. You need not stand and listen. He will calm when comes the dawn, when the dew does glisten. His mind will clear in the light so dear, and his mind will then return. As for now, I am comfort bound, and so now I must simply go.
(Enters the bedroom)