The sight is dismal; and our affairs from England come too late: the ears are senseless that should give us hearing, to tell him his commandment is fulfilled, that
BabyJesus
and
Nightson
are dead.
“A dramatically powerful first line, indeed. But why should we care?”
Two men are dead, and you ask why care?
“Two who, though?”
Townspeople
.
“But *who* are they?”
Ah, I see the problem.
“Exactly. We have been waiting so long to begin, and now Act 1, but with no past nor prologue.”
Habeas corpus, as the Romans say.
“Shall we figure out them, and thereby us?”
More like the other way around, I would think. Seeing as how *we* talk, and they do not.
“Well, they’re dead. They obviously do not talk.”
Obvious, is it?
“Well, obviously they are dead.”
Agreed.
“So they obviously have been killed.”
Fallacy.
“I do not follow.”
Well, if they were always dead, and thus never alive, they would not have been killed!
“And you think this is what has happened?”
I do not presume to *think*. I am merely correcting your logic.
“Well, you’re right. This one is a
Ghost
.”
So he was always dead? And thus never alive?
“Oh, he was once a king. Hamlet’s father, in fact.”
Ah, ‘Hamlet’! I love that play!
“Um, *Hamlet*. Not ‘Hamlet’.”
Of course. My mistake.
“Our dear old schoolmate. The character, not the play.”
Did I metareference?
“You really shouldn’t do that. It makes it hard to follow.”
Play-within-a-play, and all that.
“Precisely.”
I mean, what if we were thought to be 2 actors rather than 2 characters?
“Unthinkable!”
Indeed. Hence the careful distinction between
Nightson
and
the Ghost
, and between
BabyJesus
and
the Understudy
.
“
The Understudy
? Who was he?”
BabyJesus
.
“No, I mean, what role did he play?”
What role do *we* play?
“I guess we do need to find that out first, don’t we?”
It is Day 1. 10 alive, 6 to lynch.