Interpret What You Read – Scene 3

INSTRUCTIONS: Work with a partner. Imagine you are actors. Choose roles. Read aloud.

Scene 3 (Scrooge and Marley)

MARLEY: Scrooge!

SCROOGE: How now! What do you want with me?”

MARLEY: Much.

SCROOGE: Who are you?

MARLEY: Ask me who I was.

SCROOGE: Who were you then?

MARLEY: In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. But you don’t believe in me, do you?

SCROOGE: I don’t.

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 underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

MARLEY: Hear me! My time is nearly gone.

SCROOGE: Yes, Jacob. Go on.

MARLEY: I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.

SCROOGE: You were always a good friend to me. Thank you!

MARLEY: You will be haunted by Three Spirits.

SCROOGE: Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? I — I think I’d rather not.

MARLEY: Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow night, when the bell tolls One. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night, when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate.

SCROOGE: No, Jacob! No!

MARLEY: Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!

SCROOGE: Bah!

MARLEY: Remember, Ebenezer. Remember!

SCROOGE: Humbug!