It is coming up to three in the afternoon, and the Lord Chamberlain's Men are making ready for the world premiere of Hamlet. Dick Burbage, playing the lead as ever (and the biggest and most eloquent lead there has ever been), is in black, like Essex at his trial, and he is busy with paint‑brush and delicately mixed colours on the faces of the two boys who are taking the women's parts. The backstage area is crammed: there are parts for everybody, Jack Heminges, Gus Phillips, Tom Pope, George Bryan, Harry Condell, Will Sly, Dick Cowly, Jack Lowin, Sam Cross. (...)

There is also Will Shakespeare, who is making up for the Ghost. At thirty‑seven he is grey enough; he needs but little art on his receding hair and his beard. (...)

He has put much of himself into his tragedy, but he did not choose to write it. Burbage came across that old Hamlet of Tom Kyd in the play‑trunk and suggested that, since revenge tragedy had become popular again, it might be a good plan to do something sophisticated and modern with the old tale of the Danish prince who feigned madness to encompass revenge of a murdered king and father. (...)
Most of the actors are mouthing their lines. (...)

Music. Trumpets. The flag flies from the high tower. The play begins. On the tarrass or gallery a nervous officer of the watch: there have been nervous officers enough during the Essex troubles. All these Danes have Roman names, Italianate anyway: the groundlings cannot conceive of a tragedy without hot Southern blood in it. Francisco, Horatio, Marcellus, Bernardo. It is broad daylight and the autumn sun is warm, but words quickly paint the time of night and the intense northern cold. Eerie talk of a ghost, Horatio sceptical in the modern manner. Then the Ghost appears, Will Shakespeare, the creator of all these words but himself, as yet, speaking no words. (...)

Denmark is, for the moment, England; the audience still remembers that Christmas earthquake. Backstage, Armin does a skilful cockcrow. The Ghost glides off. While Horatio and the soldiers finish their scene on the tarrass, the main stage below fills up with the court of Denmark.

Trumpets and drums for Claudius, the boy Gertrude beside him. (...)

Now the tarrass again, and the air biting shrewdly, a nipping and an eager air. Hamlet, censuring the Danes for their drunkenness, is in danger of becoming dull. Good, the attention of the groundlings is wandering, there are some coughs. Now into that dullness the Ghost thrusts himself again, and the growing inattention is jolted awake. The Ghost beckons Hamlet away, which means that both leave the tarrass and take the stairway quickly, re‑entering on the main stage below. The five lines shared by Horatio and Marcellus are just enough to cover their passage. So this great speech of the Ghost can be made in the main acting area. The bookholder is ready to prompt, for Will is not always reliable, not even with the lines he has himself written. And now the Ghost's morning dissolution: no cockcrow this time, since an effect is diminished by repetition. The gallants from the Inns of Court, on their stools left and right of the stage, are already writing down odd lines on their tablets: they will quote them that evening at supper.

from Anthony Burgess, Shakespeare (1970)