Good evening and welcome to another episode of Brush up your Shakespeare, where we make

Shakespeare fun and easy. The line we will learn from tonight's show is,

Something is Rotten in the state of Denmark.

Say it with me, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

And one more time, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. We are now in Act 1,

scene 4 of Hamlet. A brief recap. In the first scene of Act 1,

the ghost of Hamlet's father, King of Denmark until he died unexpectedly

a couple of months earlier, is seen walking the battlements of the castle in full armor.

Horatio, Hamlet's friend and some others agreed to tell Hamlet about it.

At the end of scene two, Hamlet is informed of the situation vis-à-vis his dad, the ghost. And Hamlet says he will join the others during their watch

at midnight and see if the ghost will speak to him so they can find out what is going on.

We took a break from this narrative for a family scene with Polonius and his two adult children,

Leertes and Ophelia, in scene three.

But now, in Act 1, scene 4, we are back on the battlements of the castle with Horatio and another

guard named Marcellus and Hamlet is with them. It is very cold on the battlements, so I hope you dressed

warmly. I know I did. We know it is cold from the first line of the scene spoken by Hamlet. The air bites shrewdly. It is very cold. To which Horatio replies,

it is a nipping and an eager air. The characters have to use words to describe how cold it is

because special effects were in their infancy in Shakespeare's day. They don't have fake snow they can sprinkle down on the stage to show it is cold. All they have are words. And for Shakespeare, words are more than enough.

Next we find out the time of night through words

when Hamlet asks, what hour now?

Horatio says,

I think it lacks of 12, it's before 12. The guard Marcellus corrects him. No, it is struck.

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