TEXT:
A noise within
GERTRUDE [Folio only]
Alack, what noise is this?
Enter another Gentleman
CLAUDIUS
Attend! [Quarto only]
Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.
What is the matter?
Gentleman
Save yourself, my lord:
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous (/impiteous) haste
Than young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry 'Choose we, Laertes shall be king:'
Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds:
'Laertes shall be king, Laertes king!'
GERTRUDE
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!
CLAUDIUS
The doors are broke.
Noise within
Enter LAERTES, armed; Danes following
LAERTES
Where is this king? Sirs, stand you all without.
Danes
No, let's come in.
LAERTES
I pray you, give me leave.
Danes
We will, we will.
They retire without the door
LAERTES
I thank you: keep the door.
NOTES:
Switzers
The word appears nowhere else in Shakespeare. Switzers had already been employed around Europe as mercenaries and guards for hire for over a century by the time Hamlet was written - perhaps it is a fashionable comment, a joke that has been lost. (Although the image of an inept leader mobilising armies under his sole control remains as chilling and as reckless today as it must have then…) The Papal Swiss Guards have guarded the Vatican since 1506, and are as such one of the world’s oldest continuously-serving military forces. Recruits must be Roman Catholics from Switzerland, between the ages of 18-30, and must have undergone basic training in the Swiss army.
Gentleman
This character, who is sometimes called a messenger, could be Marcellus, the palace guard we met all the way back in Act One. He could be the same Gentleman who appeared at the beginning of the scene. I’ve even seen the lines given to Horatio (although this didn’t work as well…)
A noise within
In A Dictionary of Stage Directions in Elizabethan Drama, the editors maintain that “within” appears over 800 times in plays that survive from the period. “A noise within” features increasingly during this act - there are several more to come. It appears frequently enough as a stage direction in Shakespeare’s works - well over 25 times - that a theatre company in Pasadena, California, even took it as their name!