“Who’s There?” in Shakespeare's Hamlet: That Is the Question!

By Robert Eidelberg

The question of HAMLET -- one of the most renowned plays by probably the greatest playwright of all time, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) -- is not “To be, or not to be.” Although perhaps the most famous of all questions ever asked in dramatic literature (and whose meaning theatergoers and scholars have long debated), the answer to the question “to be, or not to be” is by no means certain (even when we ourselves feel quite positive that we know what the question is actually asking).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796073232

Robert Eidelberg

A former journalist, Robert Eidelberg served thirty-two years as a secondary school teacher of English in the New York City public school system, nineteen and a half of those years as the chair of the English Department of William Cullen Bryant High School, a neighborhood high school in the borough of Queens, New York. For several years after that he was an editorial and educational consultant at Amsco, a foundational school publications company; a community college and private college writing skills instructor; and a field supervisor and mentor in English education for the national Teaching Fellows program on the campus of Brooklyn College of The City university of New York. For the past twenty years, Mr. Eidelberg has been a college adjunct both in the School of Education at Hunter College of the City University of New York and in the English Department of Hunter College, where he teaches literature study and creative writing courses on “The Teacher and Student in Literature” and “the Literature of Waiting,” both of which he expressly created for Hunter College students. Robert Eidelberg is the author of nine educational “self-improvement” books, all of which feature “a built-in teacher” and two of which he collaborated on with his students in the special topics courses he teachers at Hunter College on “The Teacher and Student in Literature” and “The Literature of Waiting.” He lives in Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, with his life partner of 47 years and their Whippet, Chandler (named, as was his predecessor, Marlowe, in honor of noir mystery writer Raymond Chandler).

Book preview

WHO’S THERE?

IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET

— That Is the Question!

Robert Eidelberg

Copyright © 2019 by Robert Eidelberg.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-7960-7320-1

                eBook           978-1-7960-7323-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Cover design by Frank Fusco

Rev. date: 01/16/2020

Contact the author and educator Robert Eidelberg at

[e-mail]

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

804619

Contents

Hamlet Act One

Hamlet Act Two

Hamlet Act Three

Hamlet Act Four

Hamlet Act Five

About The Author

WHO’S THERE?

IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET

— That Is the Question!

Taking the Scenic Route

to Ask Only That Question

So We Can

Study,

Understand,

Appreciate,

and Even Teach

William Shakespeare’s

Masterpiece of a Play

Author Robert Eidelberg:

Books With a Built-In Teacher

Besides WHO’S THERE? IN SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET — That Is the Question! the following Built-In Teacher books by educator and author Robert Eidelberg are available through amazon.com, bn.com, xlibris.com, and authorhouse.com.

Stanza-Phobia: A Self-Improvement Approach to Bridging Any Disconnect Between You and Poetry by Understanding Just One Poem (Yes, One!) and Winding Up Not Only Learning the Process Involved but Coming to Love at Least a Few More Poems (and Maybe Poetry Itself)

Good Thinking: A Self-Improvement Approach to Getting Your Mind to Go from Huh? to Hmm to Aha!

Playing Detective: A Self-Improvement Approach to Becoming a More Mindful Thinker, Reader, and Writer By Solving Mysteries

Detectives: Stories for Thinking, Solving, and Writing

So You Think You Might Like to Teach: 29 Fictional Teachers (for Real!) Model How to Become and Remain a Successful Teacher

Staying After School: 19 Students (for Real!) Have the Next What-if Word on Remarkable Fictional Teachers and Their Often Challenging Classes

Julio: A Brooklyn Boy Plays Detective to Find His Missing Father

(with John Carter)

By indirections find directions out

— In HAMLET, Polonius’s zig-zag method for discovering what he wants to know

Dedicated to the Students of

John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens, New York, and William Cullen Bryant High School in Long Island City, Queens, New York,

for Whom I Left Junior High School 275

In Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York,

After a Happy Four Years,

For the Sole Purpose of One Day Getting to Teach

William Shakespeare’s Masterpiece HAMLET

PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE KNOWS

the Shakespeare quote "To be, or not to be — that is the question."

Only it isn’t the question.

Not actually, not if you really want to know what the man Hamlet and the play HAMLET are all about.

The question of HAMLET — one of the most renowned plays by probably the greatest playwright of all time, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) — is not To be, or not to be. Although perhaps the most famous of all questions ever asked in dramatic literature (and whose meaning theatergoers and scholars have long debated), the answer to the question to be, or not to be is by no means certain (even when we ourselves feel quite positive that we know what the question is actually asking).

But if you truly want to understand both the man Hamlet and the play HAMLET, the question you will want to ponder is the one that Shakespeare asks before any other question in the play — in fact, at the very start of the play. More exactly, in the very first two words of the play.

And what is that question? Nothing more nor less than this: Who’s there?

That’s it? Simple enough, no? Thanks to a contraction of who is to who’s, we’re off and running with two monosyllabic words asked by a relatively minor character seemingly alone on the stage. The character’s name is Bernardo; he’s a soldier in the dead of winter in medieval Denmark – and he’s heard someone or something. What’s the big deal? Is there a big deal?

And yet, why does he say those two simple words who’s there? with such anxiety — if not fear? Is he expecting someone? Someone in particular? Sure it’s dark – but that’s perfectly natural since it’s midnight. It’s also quite cold, cold enough, most likely, for Bernardo’s two words to produce a mist in front of his face that then disappears into the seasonal fog.

And, oh yes, Bernardo is only out there in the dark because he’s doing his job: he’s a night watchman at the Danish royal castle in Elsinore. Is that unseen person out there in the general mist his scheduled replacement? But who else (or what else?) would it, or could it, be?

The answer to this opening question – the question of Who’s there? – will be definitively answered in the next lines of dialogue in the play. And the question is never asked again. Not in those exact words. Not in so few words.

And yet this seemingly simple question of Who’s there? is at the very heart of the complex play HAMLET and is, I believe, the question members of a theater audience should ask continually during the course of this more than four-hour play. As should all readers of the play such as you.

Ask this one single question again and again as you read the play and you will go a long way to answering all of the questions that the man Hamlet and the play HAMLET have kept us wondering about and inquisitively guessing at for more than four centuries. Yes, most of the mysteries behind the man and the play will be solved.

And how do we plan to achieve that goal? In WHO’S THERE? we will regularly try to get a handle on both Hamlet and HAMLET by following a mapped-out scenic route through all five acts of the play, periodically making stops on our tour to ask exactly the same question that Bernardo, the Elsinore castle night watchman, asks at the start of the play and at the end of his watch: Who’s there? (What we will in effect be asking is "Who is the who? and Where is the there?")

To arrive at reasoned and reasonable answers to "Who is the who? and Where is the there?" we will make use of the two sections of WHO’S THERE? called SCENE SITE (which sites, locates, and grounds the Shakespearean language of each particular scene in time and space) and its homophone SCENE SIGHT (which pointedly – literally with bullet points — looks at and listens to all the scenes on the tour with questioning eyes and tone-tuned ears).

A recurring third section, knowingly called SCENE INSIGHT, is often a blank page (Hamlet would call it a table); it’s where you, the thoughtful reader and student of HAMLET, can explore in writing the observations you’ve made and the conclusions you’ve come to in your study of all SCENE SITE and SCENE SIGHT sections. It is also the place where you can raise and, yes, play with any questions of your own.

(From time to time, an anonymous reader and scribbler — Ann Nonymous? — thinks out loud at the start of certain early SCENE INSIGHT spaces to get you going on your own SCENE INSIGHT thoughts.)

Perhaps you are now thinking: come on, how can such a short, simple, and direct question as Who’s there? provide the handle on young Prince Hamlet’s personal and political conflicts (and on a reader’s problems with the play of his life)?

Well, first off and as you may be suspecting, Who’s there? is not so simple a question after all. When expanded back into its non-contracted form – the more formal Who is there? — our question, as has already been suggested, actually becomes both a question of who is meaningfully present in (or significantly absent from) key scenes in the play and a question of why these scenes are physically, metaphysically, and dramatically grounded where the playwright William Shakespeare has sequenced and placed them.

Of course, as a high school or college student in an English or theater class experiencing HAMLET for the first time (or the second or third) either on the page or the stage, you will have your own standard paperback edition of HAMLET and its five-acts-worth of scenes close at hand as you take the WHO’S THERE? scenic tour. The same will be true for teachers of literature attempting HAMLET for the first time (because getting to teach this masterpiece of a play is why you put in for that transfer from middle school to high school, isn’t it?).

And what about those scenes not included in this book? Glad you asked because I am confident that you will get so good at asking Who’s there? across HAMLET’s thousands of mostly blank verse lines that the rest of the play’s related answers will not consist simply of silence. Though silence might be what you initially hear (it often is when a question is thought-provoking), hear that silence out.

"Who are the who?," you will ask of those scenes.

"Where is the there?," you will add.

"Nay, answer me!," you will insist.

HAMLET

ACT ONE

42670.png

SCENE SITE

The scene’s Shakespearean language location in time and space

HAMLET / Act One, Scene One (the very opening of the play): a platform or level passageway atop the wall of the royal castle in seventh-century Elsinore, Denmark, where sentries would be posted for duty; a young night watchman, the soldier Francisco, is at his post

(Enter toward FRANCISCO another young man,

his relief guard, BERNARDO)

BERNARDO: Who’s there?

FRANCISCO: Nay, answer me. Stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO: Long live the King!

FRANCISCO: Bernardo?

FRANCISCO: You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO: ’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold. And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO: Well, good night.

If you meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

FRANCISCO: I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?

(Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS)

HORATIO: Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS: And liegeman to the Dane.

FRANCISCO: Give you good night.

MARCELLUS: Oh, farewell, honest soldier.

Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO: Bernardo hath my place.

Give you good night.

(Exit FRANCISCO)

SCENE SIGHT

Pointedly looking at and listening to the scene’s characters

HAMLET / Act One, Scene One (the very opening of the play)

For This Scene’s Who’s There?:

Who Is the Who?

• Which of the two soldiers speaks the play’s opening words of dialogue?

• Which character’s mouth would you have expected these two words (Who’s there?) to come out of? Why that particular expectation?

• Which of these two young men seems to you more tense, more nervous, more fearful? Or perhaps Bernardo and Francisco come across as equally anxiety-prone? Explain.

•