Shakespeare, in fashioning the three sentinels introduced in the play's first scene, is at the top of his game. The variations among them may not be necessary to the main events of the play, but the care with which Shakespeare shapes them shows his team spirit as a member of a troupe. He gives each one a distinct personality, food for an actor to chew on.1

The play's first stage direction has Barnardo and Francisco enter together, possibly from opposite doors. Or they may enter separately from the same door (allowing for the ghost's entrance and exit through the other door; performances can clarify relationships by reserving one door for the ghost's entrances and exits. Later it could be used by Hamlet and the others to follow after him in scene 4. Other choices, such as having the ghost enter through the sentinels' door would confuse what and who it is. His entrance probably should be different from theirs. Francisco enters a moment before or after Barnardo's entrance. Barnardo, probably pronounced B'nardo, making moot the difference between Barnardo (Q1, Q2) and Bernardo (F1), has the honor of the first speech in the play, the memorable “Who’s there,” which most who comment on the line infer is his nervous response to hearing a noise, which turns out to come from Francisco, the sentry on duty, and not the apparition, as he had feared. Barnardo's unwonted words and Francisco's response create the setting of dark night: the men have difficulty seeing each other.

Barnardo continues to contribute to the scene’s nervous frisson, first with his apparent wish to get Francisco away as soon as possible before Marcellus and Horatio arrive and then with his tense question in response to Francisco's admission that he is sick at heart (13). Francisco's unusual frankness about his uneasiness suggests that his status is equal to Barnardo's: it would be strange to speak so to a superior, or to an inferior, for that matter. Marcellus, on the other hand, seems condescending to Francisco with the adjective 'honest' (see below, CN 23). Francisco's attack of nerves goes unexplained, but his admission contributes to the scene's tension. This character has only seven lines (according to Van Dam, p. 252; see editions/promptbooks section of hamletworks.org), but one actor at least made such an impression that his career took flight from then on (see below, CN 12).

We soon learn that the cause of Barnardo's uneasiness is the apparition that had appeared on the ramparts on previous night watches. Barnardo has eighteen speeches in act 1, scene 1, several of them short one liners, twenty-four lines overall. He recognizes that the apparition wants to speak [57), while Marcellus is the one who urges Horatio to confront the spirit and who later sees that the ghost is offended (63). Barnardo's self confidence, which had returned upon the arrival of his fellow watchers, shows in that he takes control of the narrative, relating to Horatio (and the audience of course) the story of the apparition's appearance (46-50). He teases Horatio about his sudden conversion to believer (68-70), and, echoing Horatio, hazards a guess that the specter has appeared because of the war threat they are facing (124+1 - 124+4). But if the reason for its coming has to do with war, why should they convey this information to Hamlet and not the king? Isaac Asimov (2: 86) suggests that “If the Ghost takes on the appearance of the old King, he may be willing to speak to that old King's son.” But puzzles abound.

Barnardo's description of the ghost's appearance, broken off by the apparition's emergence, has to be so compelling that it will mask the ghost's entrance. Barnardo has to be strong enough to engage the audience as well as his comrades so that when he gazes upward, and perhaps gestures, to the west “where now [the star] burns,” all eyes will turn in that direction, giving the ghost the opportunity to enter, unseen, from another part the stage.

Peter Mercer points out that Shakespeare allows the tension to ebb and flow in this scene, startling in urgency and then subsiding to chat. He also points out that at no time do the men consider that the ghost is a figure seeking revenge (see below, CN 83).

Many commentators agree that all the sentinels are gentlemen of the court who take their turn on watch. Shakespeare does not invite us to consider why Francisco is alone on watch while Barnardo and Marcellus apparently watch together. In the second scene, Hamlet greets Horatio and then Marcellus without naming Barnardo—though he may include him somewhat distantly in his “Good euen sir” (355)—implying either his lower status or the fact that Hamlet does not know every member of the guard. In this scene, Barnardo responds to Hamlet's queries only in concert with others, never on his own. Marcellus says very little also. This is Horatio's scene and the blocking in performances often shows Barnardo and Marcellus dropping back, until they are specifically called upon, to give Hamlet and Horatio privacy.

This scene ends the actor's role as Barnardo but leaves open the possibility of other impersonations. Hamlet seems to be speaking to all the men when he says he will join them on their watch, but the text does not include Barnardo in the next ramparts scene—though in performance he is often present. T. J. B. Spencer (Penquin ed.1980) explains the absence of Barnardo in act one, scene 4 rather literally (in CN 603): “As a sentinel, he could not abandon his post; and it would be awkward to leave him on stage when Horatio and Marcellus rush off after Hamlet.” It would have been more than awkward to leave Barnardo on stage; the stage has to be empty when Hamlet and the ghost reappear. With Marcellus, Horatio and Hamlet on stage, along with the ghost, most members of the audience are unlikely to be concerned about Barnardo's absence, nor are they apt to worry about who remains on guard when Horatio and Marcellus follow Hamlet off the platform where they watch. A theater audience does not expect absolute verisimilitude.

Most commentators believe that all the actors who played the sentinels had other roles in the play. Perhaps Francisco played a role as court attendant in the first court scene (not Barnardo and Marcellus because they are to enter with Horatio later). All three may have stood by, as soldiers, in other court scenes. And there are many small roles throughout the play that they could have undertaken with different costumes. Barnardo could even have appeared as Reynaldo in act 2, scene 1, and if so, that could have been the reason that text calls for his absence in scenes 4 and 5.

Marcellus, by his entry with Horatio in the first scene, by the fact that Hamlet recognizes him by name in the second, appears to have a higher status than Barmardo. He has more lines (52) than the other sentinels because he speaks in scene 4 and 5 as well as in 1. In scene 1, he describes the preparations for war (86-95), which, for the audience, masks the actual reason for the ghost's visitation, and though he asks if he should strike at the apparition (137), he also affirms its invulnerability to human blows, thus confirming its ghostliness for the audience (142-5)

In scene 1, 156-63, he has the memorable lines that bring a religious hush over the scene (soon broken by Horatio's kindly skepticism). Marcellus is the one who knows where and when they can find Hamlet that very morning (173-4), suggesting that he is something of a palace insider.

In scene 4, he is intrepid enough to tell Hamlet not to follow the apparition (649) and to restrain him (665). When Horatio seems to hesitate, Marcellus urges him to join in following Hamlet and the ghost (676, 680), asserting that “tis not fit thus to obey” Hamlet, as Horatio seems to wish. During Marcellus' interchange with Horatio, he has perhaps the most oft-quoted lines in the play: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmarke” (678). Other than that line, most commentators have nothing to say about Marcellus' lines. Yet his speeches show his admirable independence of mind. In the next scene, Hamlet says of Horatio and Marcellus “As you are friends, schollers, and souldiers,” (834); perhaps he confuses the status of both men: but Horatio, the scholar, could have been at some time a soldier (as Israelis are right out of secondary school). Could Marcellus, the sentinel, also be a scholar? In performance, Hamlet sometimes nods to Marcellus as he says soldiers, to Horatio as he says scholars, but that solution does not explain the plural forms of the words, found in all three original texts, Q1, Q2, and F1. (See Edelman, CN 834, below.)

When Horatio and Marcellus call out to locate Hamlet—perhaps from off stage as Hanmer (ed. 1744) thought or, as seems more likely, far upstage. it is Marcellus in Q2, Horatio in F1, who calls out “Illo, ho, ho, my Lord” (802), explained by most commentators as a falconer's call, which seems disrespectful, unless it is, as Dowden claims in ard2, simply a shout rather than specifically a falconer's call (see CN 802 below). Matcellus' last line in the play asserts his sense of his own agency: Hamlet has asked Horatio and Marcellus to swear not to reveal what they have seen and heard, and Marcellus says, “We haue sworne my Lord already” (843). The tone of his assertion is open to interpretation (impatient and annoyed? patient and condescending? disgruntled?, muttered to Horatio?). He alone seems to object to further swearing. In any case, he and Horatio do not, in the text, swear again, though in performance they often silently offer what looks like an oath with their hands on Hamlet's sword. (But see de Gracia, CN 845, below.) Performances show whether or not Horatio and Marcellus hear the ghost's interjections from below the platform; the text is not explicit on this point, which makes a great difference as far as our perception of the ghost is concerned. The ghost speaks in the bedroom scene but is heard only by Hamlet, and having him inaudible to Marcellus and Horatio in scene 5 makes the ghost even more mysterious than he is when they can hear him.

See the website’s 'Hamlet bibs and bios' section for complete bibliographies and for thumbnail sketches of editors and commentators, a section in process. What follows is a selection from the commentary notes (CNs}; further notes can be found on the site.

Thirlby (1747-) Ms. notes in Warburton's 1747 ed. “Was Horatio a centinel." He refers to various lines, which in our TLN system are 23, 32-8, 387-8. 834, & 1909-10]. At TLN 17 he notes the plural rivals, a reference to Marcellus and Horatio, with a xref to his 32-8; at 387 m<tby4 has a xref to his 419-20.

Ed. note: Thirlby evidently planned to edit Shakespeare, and for that reason we have used small caps (the denotation of editorship) for his siglum mtby. He collected notes in the editions of rowe(now lost), >pope, theo, and warband shared his notes with early editors. See the alphabib for John Hazel Smith’s essay on Thirlby.

Delius (ed. 1854), translated from the German: Rowe indicates later that only Marcellus is an officer, Bernardo and Francisco soldiers. But the latter two must also according to old rules have the same rank. Q1 has Enter two Centinels,in the [Q2] and [F1], Enter Bernardo and Francisco two Centinels.

Marshall (1875, p. 197): “I do not see the necessity of drawing any distinction between Bernardo and Francisco; they all appear to be on equal terms; an officer does not usually relieve a private soldier on guard. But Bernardo seems to have been on equal terms with Marcellus, who seems to assume a tone of superiority over Francisco. I think all the difficulties on this point might be got over if we suppose that there was in the Court of Denmark some body like our ‘Yeomen of the Guard,' or ‘Gentlemen at Arms,' composed of gentlemen of good birth to whom the duty of keeping the watch near the Palace was committed. Of this body even Horatio might have been a member.”

Wilson (1934): “Probably the ‘sentinels' all carried partisans . . . like the Wardens of the Tower, whom Sh. seems to have in mind. As royal guards, too, they would rank as officers and gentlemen (a title Hor. expressly gives to Mar. and Bar. at [384], though Mar. seems to have been of higher military rank than Bar. (v. note [355]. Perhaps Sh. intended him as captain of the guard and the others lieutenants. ”

Hibbard (ed. 1987): “Francisco must enter first because for “dramatic effect” the audience has to know “which of the two is on duty.”

Eds. note: The audience discovers soon enough which man is on duty and which man is relieving him. The slight discombobulating effect of not knowing could be part of Sh.'s design.

From CN 3-4:

Anon. (1847, pp. 318-19): “Twice had Bernardo been encountered on the platform by the Ghost of the King, and he is now for the third time advancing at midnight to the scene of the apparition, in the belief that he will again behold the dreaded spectre which had 'almost distilled him to a jelly with the act of fear.' In this state of mind he would be startled at every sight and sound—at the sighing of the wind, and the shadows cast by the moon. Thus alive to apprehension, he heard advancing footsteps and the question, ‘Who's there?' is to our ear, the sudden instinctive exclamation of uncontrollable alarm, and not the ordinary challenge between one sentinel and another. Fear, by concentrating the senses, endows them with a supernatural acuteness; and Shakespeare was not unmindful of the fact when he made the listening, breathless Bernardo to be first conscious of their mutual approach. Francisco, the sentinel on duty, not recognizing a comrade in the terrified voice which hails him, replies,— ‘Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself.' But the moment Bernardo, reassured at hearing him speak, calls out the watch-word, ‘Long live the king!' in his habitual tones, the sentinel knows his fellow and greets him by name.”

Ed. note: This CN is by George Henry Lewes as proved by his scrapbooks at the Folger Library. From 1853 on he was George Eliot's life partner.

Mercer (1987, p. 123): “The soldiers exchanging watch quickly impress us with their own reality . . . .” Though there is also portentousness, the language remains “firmly embedded in the normal; Francisco challenges by the book and genuinely welcomes the punctuality of his relief.” Mercer continues to emphasize the naturalistic characterizations of the speakers, so at odds with the ordinary atmosphere of a revenge play.

Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006) point out that Peter Brook used this famous opening “for his 1996 Hamlet-derived play in French Qui est lá.His 2000 adaptation ended with it.”

Ritson (in ed. 1785): “If we did not find [Bernardo] in such good company, we might have taken him to have been like Francisco whom he relieves, an honest but common soldier. The strange indiscriminate use of Italian and Roman names in this and other plays, makes it obvious that the author was very little conversant in even the rudiments of either language.”

Ed. note: Ritson had published this note in 1783, recorded in CN 16-17.

Anon. [Lewes] (Quarterly Review 1847, p. 319): “What follows [3-9] is an exquisite specimen of Shakespeare's attention to the subtlest minutiae. He shows us Bernardo eager with expectation, feverish to anticipate the appearance of the Ghost, and to keep the secret from extending further, by a circumstance that would be the certain consequence—that he goes earlier than usual, and arrives at his post with unwonted punctuality. ‘You come most carefully upon your hour,' says Francisco. And how nicely true to nature is the rejoinder of Bernardo, that it has already struck! He wishes to repel the notion that he is before his accustomed time; for with a guilty feeling he fears to be suspected [. . . . ]”

Davies (1784, 3:5-6): “The right expression of a simple thought is sometimes of considerable and unexpected consequence to the speaker. Mr. Boheme was, about the year 1718, accidentally seen by Rich, when playing with some itinerants at Stratford le Bow, who soon distinguished him from his companions, and hired him, at a small income, to act at his theatre in Lincoln's-inn fields. I have been told, that this actor was, on his first trial, cast into the trifling part of Francisco. His unaffected, yet feeling, manner, of pronouncing this short speech, roused the auditors to an attention of his merit. His salary was immediately increased by the manager, and he proved afterwards a great ornament of the stage.

Strachey (1848, p. 24): “[. . . ] we are made to feel that to him as well as to Hamlet, this is a harsh world in which men draw their breath with pain; while his avowal that he is sick at heart, (for he is not ashamed to avow that which he feels—while he feels also that he can bear it,) corresponds with Hamlet's experience . . . . The key-note of the tragedy is struck in the simple preludings of this common sentry's midnight guard, to sound afterwards in ever-spreading vibrations through the complicated, though harmonious strains of Hamlet's own watch through a darker and colder night than the senses can feel.”

Spencer (ed. 1980), like others, says that Francisco's malaise“contributes to the emotional atmosphere and prepares for the Prince's heart-sickness at [313-43]. It oddly contrasts with the disciplined military scene.”

d'Argens (1744, letter 14, apud Michèle Willems) compares the vulgarity of Sh.'s image to Racine's dignified way of evoking the silence of the night in his 1674 Iphigénie (1.1.9): ‘Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et le vent, et Neptune” [everything is asleep, the army, the wind and Neptune], a translation that does not do justice to the balanced rhythm of the alexandrine.

Lewes (1844, p. 320): Marcellus “exclaims, like one awakened from a trance, ‘O! farewell, honest soldier!' On any other supposition the ejaculation would be unmeaning, and it is conclusive to show what Shakespeare intended. The reverie of Marcellus once broken, he turns from fruitless speculation to the business of the night; and in the same breath in which he bids Francisco farewell, inquires who has relieved him, that he may be satisfied it is no other than his own partner Bernardo.”

Kliman (2000): “The adjective [honest] may be a clue to Francisco's status, often considered by modern editors to be beneath that of Marcellus and Barnardo. According to the OED 1.3, 'As a vague epithet of appreciation or praise, especially as used in a patronizing way to an inferior (Cf. worthy).' First used in this sense in 1551, it is found in MND 3.1.184 (1002) and elsewhere, most effectively perhaps in Othellowith respect to Iago (2.3.535).” .

Mercer (1987, p. 124): “Bernardo certainly begins with diction natural to a soldier—although even here we may immediately suspect some deeper coherence of metaphor when we recall how prominent such terms are in the idiom of Hamlet himself: 'the pales and forts of reason' [621+12], 'the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune' [1712]. The image of the self as a citadel under siege whose outer defences are crumbling fast is very close to the centre of the play's concerns..”

Mercer (1987, p. 125): “. . . the most striking feature of Bernardo's tale is its strangely leisurely syntax; it is so circuitous that the literal object of his story—the Ghosthimself—has appeared on stage before the narrator has reached the verb that would introduce him as a grammatical object..”

Delius (ed. 1854): “; . . . Schlegel translates 'He would like to be spoken with,' as if Bernardo read this wish in the ghost's features, but probably the line means simply that the ghost is amenable to discourse.” Ed. note: Trans. from the German.

Mercer (1987, p.128): “We are [with lines 83-6] in a world of argument and reason, of deduction and interpretation . . . What is certain is that Horatio does not suspect, any more than the two officers do, that this may be a ghost seeking revenge: almost any explanation seems more plausible than that..”

Kliman (1997): “By having Marcellus say this line, as well as the decision of Marcellus and Bernardo to approach Horatio rather than someone close to the king, Sh. suggests that the rottenness has to do with the new regime.”

Clark & Wright (ed. 1872): on Nay: “i.e. Let us not leave it to heaven, but do something ourselves.”

Spencer (ed. 1980): “a mild contradiction to Heaven will direct it, implying that they themselves can do something.”

Dowden (ed. 1899) explains that what is meant [by Marcellus' [in Q2] “Illo, ho, ho, my Lord” is not a falconer's call, though that is how Hamlet answers it, but simply a call, as in The Birth of Merlin, Prince Uter's “So ho, boy, so ho, illo ho!”

Edelman (2000), in discussing the qualities of a courtier (see CN 1807): “Hamlet himself says to Horatio and Marcellus, [quotes 833-4]. He thus implies that scholars and soldiersshould apply to both.”

MacDonald (ed. 1885): Marcellus “feels his honour touched.”

de Grazia (2007, p. 41), assuming that the ghost follows the men rather than withdrawing from them, points out that since theatrically the space under the stage belonged to devils it puts the ghost “into the ranks of the damned and diabolic. It is for this reason, it appears, that the swearing ceremony over the cross of the sword [857] cannot proceed. Two forces are in conflict. While the cross-like sword sanctifies the spot, the Ghost's presence beneath hexes it.”