Original end to the 1967 edition
WARNING- you have entered an OMG zone. Prepare to be wowed.

Fortinbras: Let four captains
bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage:
for he was likely, had he been put on,
to have proved most royally: and for his passage,
the soldiers' music and the rite of war
speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.

(The Bodies are picked up: a peal of ordnance is shot off. A dead march begins and continues until the stage is empty except for the two Ambassadors.)

(Pause. The move downstage. They stop.)

Ambassador: Hm . . .

2nd Amb: Yes?

1st Amb: What?

2nd Amb: I thought you ---

1st Amb: No.

2nd Amb: Ah.

(Pause.)

1st Amb: Tsk tsk . . .

2nd Amb: Quite.

1st Amb: Shocking business.

2nd Amb: Tragic . . . (he looks in the direction of the departing corpses) . . . four --- just like that.

1st Amb: Six in all.

2nd Amb: Seven.

1st Amb: No --- six.

2nd Amb: The King, the Queen, Hamlet, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Polonius. Seven.

1st Amb: Ophelia. Eight.

2nd Amb: King, Queen, Hamlet, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius, Ophelia. Eight.

(They nod and shake their heads.)

(Looks about.) Well . . . One hardly knows what to . . .

(From outside there is shouting and banging, a Man, say, banging his fist on a wooden door and shouting, obscurely, two names.)

(The Ambassadors look at each other.)

1st Amb: Better go and see what it's all about . . .

(The other nods.)

(They walk off together. The Tragedians' tune becomes audible --- far away.)

(The house lights come up until they are as bright as the lights on the empty stage.)


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