PROJECT-HAMLET.INFO: The Sentinels

"Remember the beginning of this little presentation, when we were talking about Horatio and you wanted to know why I'm not putting Hamlet first, since he's the title character?" I ask and turn to the two guys in their mid-twenties who had almost been on the point of leaving then, but have since seemed quite content to stay.

They grin at me. "Yeah," one of them answers. "And you did tell us plenty about Horatio, that's for sure." He narrows his eyes. "But what's that got to do with the Sentinels? I mean, okay, I can kinda see how Fortinbras becomes the Audience in your scenario and there's a link between Hamlet and Horatio and him that way. But what are you saying now, do you have some sort of special agenda for what's going on between Horatio and the Sentinels, too?"

"Like, what?" His frown deepens. "I don't think I get that one. Besides, I don't see how it can possibly be so important that we even need to begin with Horatio and the Sentinels. You kinda dodged that point anyway earlier, you know?"

"I did dodge it," I acknowledge. "But you're actually right on to the heart of the matter."

Since there is no random element whatsoever in the structure of the Bard's plays, one has to wonder indeed why this one doesn't begin with its all-important title character. Now, on the one hand, this is arguably just par for the course for Shakespeare: "Macbeth" begins with the three witches, "Romeo and Juliet" with the Chorous and a Verona market place scene, "Henry V" also with the Chorus and then Ely and Canterbury, "Henry VI" (Part 1) with "Hank Cinq"'s funeral, "King Lear" with Kent, Gloucester and Edmund, "The Taming of the Shrew" in an alehouse, and "Othello" with Roderigo, Brabantio and Iago (yeah, well, alright – Iago is a bit of a matter apart). On the other hand, there are also plenty of examples to the contrary; most prominently so, I guess, "Richard II" and "Richard III," "King John," "Love's Labours Lost," "Much Ado About Nothing," and "Henry IV" (Part 1). But does a play always have to begin with its principal character(s)? No, of course it doesn't.

Because how to begin a play – or indeed, any piece of literature – is not necessarily and/or specifically a function of introducing your protagonist(s): rather, the opening scene of a play, the first chapter (and in particular the first paragraph) of a novel, a novella or a short story, and the first couplet or quatrain of a sonnet or other piece of poetry, whether any of these is actually entitled "Introduction" or not, follows the broader purpose of setting the stage. This can, of course, and often does also mean introducing the principal character(s). But even then, we typically learn much more: not only are we placed into our story's temporal and local setting, we are also introduced to its topical premise and the conflicts associated therewith, as well as at least some of its characters' motivations. And while a carefully laid-out introductory scene alone may not be a guarantee for a continued high level of literary craftsmanship, I'll hazard the theory that a storyteller will run into major problems sooner or later if he or she doesn't set the scene properly from the start, because this will cause a million little details to pop up later that suddenly require mending, which in turn ultimately causes the narrative to have greater resemblance with a hand-me-down patchwork rug than with one of those elaborate arrases behind which Polonius so likes to hide when listening in on a conversation – a result easily avoided by using greater care in setting the scene from the outset.

A prime example of using the title character himself in this fashion is Gloucester's opening "Winter of Our Discontent" soliloquy in "Richard III."

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

The introduction to the play's outward circumstances: The 15th century War of Roses is almost over; the House of York (which bears a white rose in its heraldic badge) has won the penultimate round, and placed their representative Edward IV back on the throne. The Lancasters (whose heraldic badge shows a red rose) are, for the time being at least, defeated, and pose no further threat of renewed hostilities. A time of peace and quiet awaits the country. All is well ... or so you would think.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

For look who is not happy at all with these sunny peaceful times: Richard Gloucester has not yet uttered the word "I" a single time, and already, from his description of war's decline from a powerful and fearsome force to a thing "caper[ing] – nimbly – in a lady's – chamber" (you really have to pay special attention to every single word here): a thing prancing about lightly and carelessly, associating with the weaker (and gentler) sex, and seeking carnal pleasures – a thing, in other words, that no true fighter, no man used to braving the harsh realities of life would ever even take seriously – from this tiny bit of monologue we can already deduce that he is, indeed, most unhappy with the recent developments' promise of serendipity; and thus, while for others the "winter of discontent" brought about by war is over, for him, the period of discontent is only beginning. (And to make sure we're really getting the point, he even adds that bit about the "lascivious pleasing of a lute," thus not only reinforcing the "[bed] chamber" imagery but even adding the matching audio stream, by referring to one of the era's most sophisticated and delicate musical instruments, the instrument of choice of troubadours and minstrels, who often also performed at court and whose repertoire included a large amount of ... love songs.)

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:

So why, then, does Gloucester have nothing but contempt for peace? Not only because he sees it as licentious, weak, and lacking in teeth (with which latter, incidentally – as we are reminded in one of the last scenes of "Henry VI" – he himself is said to have been born; thus confirming as surely as his hunchback, his club foot and his clawed hand his hell-bound state); but because peace, by its very nature, deprives him of his only playing field and exposes his outward ugliness, although he is not ashamed to set the latter forth in detail himself, even taking a sort of sick, narcissistic delight in it; for indeed, as he is now more than ready to demonstrate, it does very much mirror his pitch-black soul:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

The soliloquy's centerpiece; Richard Gloucester's motivation and the play's driving force, unfailing until the night before his final battle against the Earl of Richmond – King Henry VII-to-be, heir of the Lancasters, and founder of the Tudor dynasty – when the ghosts of all those whom Richard has (had) murdered appear to both him and Richmond, cursing the former and promising assistance to the latter even from beyond the grave. (And as in Hamlet's World, the mere fact that we, the audience, are actually able to see these ghosts, is an indication how seriously the world is turned upside down by Richard's evil reign.) And yet, try to imagine what kind of impact these words would have if Shakespeare, through Gloucester's own words, had not previously laid out for us both the play's outward circumstances and the title character's thoughts on these: absolutely none. You'd probably find yourself shrugging them off as a ridiculously, pitifully crippled man's bitter comment on a life that is about to pass him by and might very well already have passed him by in the past. Only because of the build-up of analysis from the play's external premise to Richard's internal point of view, we know that we had darned well better take this guy very, very seriously; and that if he speaks of his determination "to prove a villain," he means exactly that, and that it bodes nothing good for England at all.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

Thus, we are no longer surprised to see Richard shift gears and instantly move from thought to action once his all-important mental premise is established; indeed, we'd probably be surprised if his words had turned out to have been empty shells after all. And "subtle, false and treacherous" devil that he is, he not only starts out by pitting his two elder brothers against each other; he also takes direct recourse to the supernatural by diverting a prophecy actually designating him (Richard Gloucester) as the murderer of his eldest brother's, King Edward IV's offspring, to their middle brother George, the Duke of Clarence. But of course, this is only the beginning of his villainy ...

Now, if you compare the opening soliloquy of "Richard III" with the first scene in "Hamlet," you see that the latter accomplishes much the same thing. This is already set forth in greater detail in the section on Hamlet's World, so I won't repeat it here at length, but just to sum up the essentials:

Might Shakespeare also have gotten this message across by letting Prince Hamlet be the one to encounter his father's Ghost in the first scene instead of Horatio and the Sentinels? I doubt it. For one thing, he would have foregone a good deal of the tension he creates by staging the Ghost's terrifying appearance without immediately telling us the reasons for it; a build-up of tension, moreover, which quite critically also highlights the first act's final scene, when Hamlet does meet the Ghost at last and learns about his father's murder. In addition, whichever way you ultimately interpret Hamlet's character, Shakespeare apparently considered it essential that we not only experience his encounter with the Ghost together with him, but that we also go through the same emotional process as he does leading up to it; something the Bard achieves by on the one hand having uns meet the Ghost with Horatio and the Sentinels and on the other hand having Hamlet independently develop feelings of apprehension because of his mother's fast, unholy marriage to his uncle, the new King. Only because we go into the encounter between Hamlet and his father's Ghost with exactly the same trepidations as the Prince, we are as shocked as he is about the Ghost's message, and only for this reason, too, do we feel the weight of his commission as strongly as the Prince does. For herein lies the crucial difference between "Hamlet" and "Richard III": The Prince of Denmark's tragedy is driven not only by the outward fact that Hamlet learns about his father's murder, and by the underlying symbolic meaning of that murder, but also, in no small part, by the mental effect that this horrifying piece of news has on Hamlet. Thus, it is essential for us to see how this inward development of the Prince's comes about. "Richard III," on the other hand, is premised on an attitude firmly established in Richard Gloucester from the very beginning. We don't need to see how it developed in the first place – all that matters is what it does to his country, to his family, and to his other associates.

As such, then, the structure of this particular tragedy's first act is not merely a supreme example of the old adage "show, don't tell" – it immediately draws us, the audience, into the action and brings us side to side with our hero. I very much doubt Shakespeare could have achieved this as effectively if he had had Hamlet meet his father's Ghost in this act's first instead of its last scenes. But I think the Bard also had another reason not to introduce Hamlet's character until after Horatio's and the Sentinels' meeting with the Ghost, and that has to do with the Sentinels themselves.

"Ah," my two impatient friends from the beginning make. "You are getting to them, too, after all. You're a bit long-winded, you know that, lady? Whatever happened to brevity is the soul of wit, and all that?"

"Oh give me leave, will ya', guys?" I respond, feigning exasperation. "You wanted to know why there is good reason not to start with the piece's title character. And as you see, there are plenty of structural reasons to consider before we can even move on to the characters with whom it does in fact start – so lest you again accuse me of dodging something, I thought we might as well get the structural stuff out of the way first."

At the outset, I think Shakespeare may well have wanted to make sure his audience's own first encounter with the Ghost occurs together with characters with whom they would find it easy to identify, and whom they would find instantly reliable. In that regard, the Sentinels are as important as Horatio: while the latter, by virtue of his very rationality, confirms to us that the Ghost is real (and that therefore things are exactly as rotten in the state of Denmark as we fear they may be), the Sentinels are men of the people – down to earth but not highly educated, and for that very reason, as profoundly troubled by this supernatural appearance as would have been many of the Bard's original audience members. On the other hand, they also stand for society's structural backbone, in that they are members of their country's armed forces, which would likely also have made them acceptable to the representatives of the establishment. The latter fact, moreover, mirrors their structural placement in the stage-setting first act, and there alone, thus highlighting their foundation-building function within the play.

But why three Sentinels – wouldn't one or two of them have done as well? No, probably not; in fact, I think the way we are taken into the first scene by successively meeting the three Sentinels is, again, quite crucial to that scene's build-up of tension. Let's retrace what exactly happens there:

First, there is the exchange between Francisco and the soldier due to relieve him, Bernardo. Of course Francisco expects Bernardo's arrival – and yet, he is so apprehensive that he nevertheless makes his fellow soldier stand at attention and properly announce himself before he lets him approach. This pivotal opening creates an enormous amount of tension, literally within seconds of the curtain's rise and before we have even heard a single word about the Ghost; and the then-ensuing brief dialogue enhances that tension even further. Now, obviously this kind of opening requires two Sentinels right then and there. But I also think there is some significance in having Horatio arrive with a third Sentinel – Marcellus – and not together with Bernardo, simply because the ongoing exchange between the Sentinels is as important as that between them and Horatio; and since Francisco is being relieved, a third Sentinel has to enter the picture. For imagine the conversation about the Ghost's appearance on the two previous nights if it were to take place between Horatio and Bernardo (or Marcellus) alone: You'd have all the weight of a learned man's reason and superior intelligence arguing with an average guy, who has been holding the watch alone, in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, and at a time of potential aggression from a neighbouring country – circumstances aplenty, in other words, which might make even a trained soldier weary enough to start imagining things. That conclusion is necessarily made much more improbable by Marcellus's and Bernardo's joint insistence that they really did see the Ghost: Horatio is in fact left to (albeit most carefully) insinuate something akin to mass hysteria to maintain his disbelief against both of their claims; and the very pointedness of his opposition, reinforced by the Sentinels' united stand, in turn makes it so hard for him to accept, against all that sanity and reason have ever taught him, that he has been wrong, and thus all the more powerfully drives home the terrifying significance of the Ghost's appearance.

In terms of personalities, Marcellus of course eventually emerges as the most multi-dimensional of all three Sentinels, not only by virtue of the fact that he is the only one of them who is also around on the night when Hamlet finally meets his father's Ghost, but also because of his comments on the first night, when he is the one to ultimately realise that once the Ghost has vanished, in trying to detain the apparition with their earthly weapons they in fact "do it wrong ...; for it is as the air, invulnerable, and [their] vain blows malicious mockery;" and he, too, is the first to speak about the symbolic meaning of the cock, upon whose crowing the Ghost had at last disappeared. Every so often, therefore, we see cameos of rather famous actors in the role of Marcellus, such as, for example, Jack Lemmon in Sir Kenneth Branagh's movie. Yet, I'm not sure I'd necessarily go along with that. (And as in the case of Fortinbras and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I can almost hear my fictitious casting director's big sigh of relief now.) For ultimately, Marcellus – just like Bernardo and Francisco – is the equivalent of a rook in chess terms: a sturdy, reliable cornerstone piece to the then-ensuing action; based on his statements, probably more seasoned than the other two Sentinels (despite Hamlet's use of the word "boy" in responding to Marcellus when he and Horatio finally find the Prince after his encounter with the Ghost), but nevertheless not highly individualised. For although we're still moving solidly on the play's central level, we are gradually approaching the innermost circle, that of the Players, which exist almost exclusively as archetypes. We began this process when addressing the Pawns' characters and we will continue it with the Clowns; but standing between these two classes, the Sentinels functionally very much belong into this group of less individualised characters as well – and that is also true for Marcellus; and it doesn't change by virtue of the mere fact that there are three Sentinels in total (but only two rooks in a game of chess), because except for a very brief moment we never see more than two of them together on the stage, and even in that brief transitional phase from Francisco and Bernardo to Bernardo and Marcellus, all three Sentinels don't seem to stand together at all; rather, Marcellus proceeds from Francisco to Bernardo only after Francisco has left the stage.