A Christmas Carol - Script

[as they exit a caroler enters through the door.]CAROLER God bless you merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay![Scrooge grabs a large ruler and runs toward him. He screams and runs away swiftly. Scrooge sits whileBob Cratchit still copies busily at his desk. ]BOB CRATCHIT Shall I close up now, sir?SCROOGE: And you'll want the whole day tomorrow, I suppose?BOB CRATCHIT If quite convenient, sir.SCROOGE: It's not convenient, and it's not fair. If I were to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd thinkyourself ill-used, I'll be bound? And yet you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for nowork.BOB CRATCHIT It is but once a year, sir.SCROOGE: A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December! But I supposeyou must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.[They both ready themselves to exit.]BOB CRATCHIT I will, sir. Thank you!SCROOGE: Close the door, Cratchit. I'm off for that poor excuse of a dinner at the tavern.BOB CRATCHIT A Merry Christmas, sir!SCROOGE: Bah! Humbug I tell you![As Scrooge exits, carolers enter the scene singing 'Joy to the World.' Scrooge walks toward them. BobCratchit closes the shop door and scurries off.]SCROOGE: Be off you! What joy could this world entertain on such a miserable evening as this?[The children run off.]SCROOGE: Bah! Humbug![Scrooge sits in his bedroom chair and picks up a bowl of gruel from a stool. He looks at the fireplaceand sees Marley's apparition. Looking terrified...]SCROOGE: Marley![Getting up he drops his gruel.]SCROOGE: Humbug![After walking around the room he again sits. Bells and chimes suddenly sound, then stop as fast as theyhad started. A loud creaking is heard, followed by a slam of a large heavy cellar door. Scrooge stands.]SCROOGE: It's humbug still! I won't believe it.[He then hears the approaching of chains dragging as Marley's ghost enters with old ripped clothes,chains money boxes, ledgers, keys and money bags.]SCROOGE: How now! What do you want with me?JACOB MARLEY: Much!SCROOGE: Who are you?JACOB MARLEY: Ask me who I was.SCROOGE: Who were you then? You're particular, for a shade.JACOB MARLEY: In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley. You don't believe in me!SCROOGE: I don't.JACOB MARLEY: What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?SCROOGE: I don't know.JACOB MARLEY: Why do you doubt your senses?SCROOGE: Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdonepotato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, Whatever you are! You see this toothpick?JACOB MARLEY: I do.SCROOGE: You are not looking at it.JACOB MARLEY: But I see it, notwithstanding.SCROOGE: Well! I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion ofgoblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! Humbug![Marley's ghost gives an agonizing wail, shaking his chains forcefully. Scrooge falls to his knees.]SCROOGE: Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?JACOB MARLEY: Man of the worldly mind! Do you believe in me or not?SCROOGE: I do. I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?JACOB MARLEY: It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad amonghis fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do soafter death. It is doomed to wander through the world - oh, woe is me! And witness what it cannot share,but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness![The spectre raises the chains with a single moan.]56