Hamlet's letter

A small room. A messenger brings Horatio a sealed letter. Horatio opens it and reads. The voice on the page is Hamlet's, in the present tense, with the urgency of a thing just-happened. Two days out from England, he writes, the ship was overhauled by a pirate of "very warlike appointment." A fight followed. Hamlet, "in the grapple," boarded the pirate ship — "I alone became their prisoner" — and the two ships then separated, with the pirates carrying Hamlet off and the original ship continuing for England without him.

The pirates, Hamlet writes, have proved "thieves of mercy" — they have set him ashore on the coast of Denmark in exchange for a future favor. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he notes drily, have continued on toward England with their sealed orders. He has matters for Horatio's ear that will make him "dumb." Horatio is to deliver the enclosed letters (one for Claudius, others for the queen) and then come to where the messenger will lead him; Hamlet is in hiding nearby.

Horatio gathers the letters and goes with the messenger. The audience now knows that the king's plan to kill Hamlet has failed and that the prince is back in the country, alive, hidden, and presumably no longer interested in delay. The pieces are being moved into position for the final scenes.