In reading any one of Shakespeare’s plays, remember that what you are reading is a performance script. Stage directions describe some of the stage action, but some is suggested within the dialogue itself. Try to be alert to such signals as you stage the play in your imagination.
In the first scene of Hamlet, for example, Bernardo says, “Last night of all, / When yond same star that’s westward from the pole / Had made his course t’ illume that part of heaven / Where now it burns.” It is clear that, on the word “yond,” he points toward the imagined star. Similarly, when Bernardo says of the Ghost, “See, it stalks away!” the stage action for the Ghost is obvious.
It is less obvious, later in the scene, exactly what is to take place when Horatio says, “I’ll cross it though it blast me.” The director and the actor (and the reader, in imagination) must decide whether Horatio makes a cross of his body by spreading his arms, or whether he simply means he will stand in the Ghost’s path. Again, as the Ghost once again exits, the lines “Shall I strike at it with my partisan?” “Do, if it will not stand,” clearly involve some violent action. Marcellus describes their gestures as a “show of violence” and mentions their “vain blows,” but the question of who strikes at the Ghost and with how much vigor will be answered variously from production to production.
Learning to read the language of stage action is especially important when one reaches a crucial scene in Hamlet like that of the play within the play or that of the final duel. In both scenes implied stage action vitally affects our response to the play.
Adapted from Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (editors), the New Folger Library Shakespeare edition of Hamlet. © 1992 Folger Shakespeare Library
