And how is Hamlet?
Elsinore. A platform before the castle. From one side of the stage the AMBASSADOR enters. From the other, four GENTLEMEN of the court who, on seeing the AMBASSADOR, rush to grasp his hand in hearty greeting.
FIRST GENT: Welcome my worthy lord, at last returned
From foreign lands, thy mission done and blest
With fortune's fruitage and the palms of peace.
SECOND GENT: All Elsinore this greeting gives to thee
With one unstinting universal tongue.
AMBASSADOR: I thank thee, sirs. Full welcome do I feel
After my three years absence. I have been
Ambassador too long in lands remote
In loyal service to the Danish crown;
And here before the castle's ramparts high
My heart doth leap, like to the roistering vole
In native glades delighting. (Eagerly) Gentlemen,
Tell me, I pray, how goes the Danish state?
What toys, what changes, fashions, shifts and turns?
(With deep affection) And how is Hamlet, Denmark's dear delight?
Young Hamlet, witty jocund, kind and free,
Of liberal heart and manner nobly sweet,
Poetic Hamlet, hope of all the land,
Life of our life and loadstar of our fate,
Dancer, mimic, soldier, raconteur,
Philosopher and favourite of the gods.
FIRST GENT: (with difficulty) Hamlet, my lord . . . is dead.
Pause.
AMBASSADOR: (shocked) What? Hamlet dead?
Alas! but how came Hamlet thus to die?
SECOND GENT: Young Hamlet died in duelling, gentle sir.
He fought the young Laertes, also dead.
AMBASSADOR: (appalled) Laertes dead?
THIRD GENT: A corpse who even now
Is freshly festering in a nearby grave
With all the zest of youth.
AMBASSADOR: How did he die?
FIRST GENT: In combat keen against our former Prince
For vengeance of his sister, lately mad.
AMBASSADOR: The fair Ophelia?
FOURTH GENT: Foul Ophelia, sir.
For she lies decomposing, though her wits
Rotted before her.
SECOND GENT: 'Twas her father's death.
AMBASSADOR: (distressed) The fair Polonius?
THIRD GENT: Dead, sir, dead as well.
Slain by Prince Hamlet who, as you have heard,
Is also dead.
AMBASSADOR: How tragic for the Queen.
FIRST GENT: Gertrude, I fear, has passed beyond such pain,
Plucked off by poison, from the King's own hand.
AMBASSADOR: Is't possible? King Claudius, he who reigns?
FIRST GENT: Who reigned, my friend, for he is quite reigned out.
Young Hamlet too hath heaved him up to Heaven.
AMBASSADOR: And Hamlet's father?
THIRD GENT: Deader than the rest:
He died before the killing had begun.
He's now a ghost and often can be heard
Intoning on these very battlements.
AMBASSADOR: (becoming desperate) And Osric, the effeminate courtier?
SECOND GENT: Dead of exertion following the duel.
AMBASSADOR groans in general grief.
SECOND GENT: A hideous scene of blood and, as I fear,
A heavy sight to greet young Fortinbras.
AMBASSADOR: Young Fortinbras?
FOURTH GENT: The conquering prince who came,
Moonlike, to view the slaughter of the field,
Pale monarch of the slumbering citadel -
Inheritor of Denmark's empty crown.
Pause.
AMBASSADOR: So Fortinbras is King in Denmark now.
How is he?
SECOND GENT: He is dead, my lord, as well.
AMBASSADOR: How came he too to die? It seems most strange.
SECOND GENT: Struck dead by all the news of all the dead.
The fatal tidings shocked his delicate spirit
And called it to repose.
AMBASSADOR sighs heavily.
THIRD GENT: He died soon after
He heard the bloody summary from the lips
Of Horatio.
FOURTH GENT: The late Horatio.
AMBASSADOR: Alas Horatio! And is he gone as well?
FIRST GENT: Gone, gone, my lord, to dally in the dust.
No sooner had he voiced his bitter tale
Than, taking out the sword he ever kept
For just such moments, plunged it with a sigh
And, shortly, slept.
AMBASSADOR: (greatly moved) O grievous anecdote.
SECOND GENT: And others too hath ta'en their loyal lives
With swords and bodkins, cannons, spears and knives:
Marcellus and Bernardo and a Priest . . .
THIRD GENT: Reynaldo and Francisco and the Players . . .
FOURTH GENT: A Gentleman, a Captain and two Clowns.
FIRST GENT: The 'Dramatis Personae', as it were.
AMBASSADOR: (with a sense of discovery) So Death,
I see, doth suit the tragic scene;
To be is not to be, but to have been.
The AMBASSADOR unsheathes his sword.
(Bravely) Come, valiant friends, we needs must wander towards
Some nether room, and fall upon our swords.
The others agree manfully, and they and the AMBASSADOR exit.
This sketch comes from the opening scene of Perry Pontac's radio play Hamlet, Part II, described by the author as 'a sequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Part I'. The production starred Harriet Walter, Peter Jeffrey, John Moffatt and Simon Russell Beale, and the script was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as a companion-piece to the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet, broadcast in 1992, just as Pontac's Prince Lear served as a prequel to the John Gielgud King Lear which was heard on Radio 3 in 1994. Both plays form part of an evening of classical parody for the stage, entitled Codpieces.