Marcellus

Family: Denmark · Role: sentinel · First appears: Hamlet · Act I, Scene I

Life events

• A ghost appears before the watchmen in the likeness of the dead King.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene I)
  • With: Barnardo Horatio
  • “Enter Ghost. BARNARDO. In the same figure, like the King that’s dead. MARCELLUS. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.”
• The apparition vanishes when the cock crows.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene I)
  • With: Barnardo Horatio
  • “It was about to speak, when the cock crew. HORATIO. And then it started, like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons.”
• The watchmen decide to tell Hamlet about the spirit they witnessed.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene I)
  • With: Horatio Hamlet
  • “Break we our watch up, and by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, as needful in our loves, fitting our duty? MARCELLUS. Let’s do’t, I pray”
• Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo reveal to Hamlet that his father’s apparition has appeared on watch.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene II · 📍 Elsinore)
  • With: Hamlet Horatio Barnardo
  • “Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch In the dead waste and middle of the night, Been thus encounter’d. A figure like your father, Armed at point exactly, cap-à-pie, Appears before them”
• Horatio and Marcellus swear not to reveal what they witnessed.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene V)
  • With: Hamlet Horatio
  • “My lord, we will not.”
• Hamlet requires Horatio and Marcellus to conceal his planned antic disposition.(Hamlet · Act I, Scene V)
  • With: Hamlet Horatio
  • “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall”

Hamlet · Act I, Scene I

• with Barnardo (They share alternating watches.) “If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, / The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.”
• allies with Horatio “Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night, That if again this apparition come He may approve our eyes and speak to it.”
• friends with Hamlet “Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet; for upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?”

Hamlet · Act I, Scene II

• liege: Hamlet “Our duty to your honour.”

Hamlet · Act I, Scene V

• friends with Hamlet “For your desire to know what is between us, O’ermaster’t as you may. And now, good friends, As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers, Give me one poor request.”

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Extracted from the original text of Shakespeare's Tragedies. Made with Rho MD.