copia
Stave one
Summary
On a frigid, foggy Christmas Eve in London, a shrewd, mean-spirited cheapskate named Ebenezer Scrooge works meticulously in his counting-house. Outside the office creaks a little sign reading “Scrooge and Marley”–Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s business partner, has died seven years previous. Inside the office, Scrooge watches over his clerk, a poor diminutive man named Bob Cratchit. The smoldering ashes in the fireplace provide little heat even for Bob’s tiny room. Despite the harsh weather Scrooge refuses to pay for another lump of coal to warm the office.
Suddenly, a ruddy-faced young man bursts into the office offering holiday greetings and an exclamatory, “Merry Christmas!” The young man is Scrooge’s jovial nephew Fred who has stopped by to invite Scrooge to Christmas dinner. The grumpy Scrooge responds with a “Bah! Humbug!” refusing to share in Fred’s Christmas cheer. After Fred departs, a pair of portly gentlemen enters the office to ask Scrooge for a charitable donation to help the poor. Scrooge angrily replies that prisons and workhouses are the only charities he is willing to support and the gentlemen leave empty-handed. Scrooge confronts Bob Cratchit, complaining about Bob’s wish to take a day off for the holiday. “What good is Christmas,” Scrooge snipes, “that it should shut down bus iness?” He begrudgingly agrees to give Bob a day off but insists that he arrive at the office all the earlier the next day.
Scrooge follows the same old routine, taking dinner in his usual tavern and returning home through the dismal, fog-blanketed London streets. Just before entering his house, the doorknocker on his front door, the same door he has passed through twice a d ay for his many years, catches his attention. A ghostly image in the curves of the knocker gives the old man a momentary shock: It is the peering face of Jacob Marley. When Scrooge takes a second re-focused look, he sees nothing but a doorknocker. With a disgusted “Pooh-pooh,” Scrooge opens the door and trudges into his bleak quarters. He makes little effort to brighten his home: “darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.” As he plods up the wide staircase, Scrooge, in utter disbelief, sees a locomotive hearse climbing the stairs beside him.
After rushing to his room, Scrooge locks the door behind him and puts on his dressing gown. As he eats his gruel before the fire, the carvings on his mantelpiece suddenly transform into images of Jacob Marley’s face. Scrooge, determined to dismiss the strange visions, blurts out “Humbug!” All the bells in the room fly up from the tables and begin to ring sharply. Scrooge hears footsteps thumping up the stairs. A ghostly figure floats through the closed door–Jacob Marley, transparent and bound in chains.
Scrooge shouts in disbelief, refusing to admit that he sees Marley’s ghost–a strange case of food poisoning, he claims. The ghost begins to murmur: He has spent seven years wandering the Earth in his heavy chains as punishment for his sins. Scrooge looks closely at the chains and realizes that the links are forged of cashboxes, padlocks, ledgers, and steel purses. The wraith tells Scrooge that he has come from beyond the grave to save him from this very fate. He says that Scrooge will be visited by three spirits over the next three nights–the first two appearing at one o’clock in the morning and the final spirit arriving at the last stoke of midnight. He rises and backs toward the window, which opens almost magically, leaving a trembling Scrooge white with fear. The ghost gestures to Scrooge to look out the window, and Scrooge complies. He sees a throng of spirits, each bound in chains. They wail about their failure to lead honorable, caring lives and their inability to reach out to others in need as they and Marley disappear into the mist. Scrooge stumbles to his bed and falls instantly asleep.
Stave four
The phantom, a menacing figure clad in a black hooded robe, approaches Scrooge. Scrooge involuntarily kneels before him and asks if he is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The phantom does not answer, and Scrooge squirms in terror. Still reeling from the revelatory experiences with the last two spirits, Scrooge pleads with the ghost to share his lesson, hopeful that he may avoid the fate of his deceased partner.
The ghost takes Scrooge to a series of strange places: the London Stock Exchange, where a group of businessmen discuss the death of a rich man; a dingy pawn shop in a London slum, where a group of vagabonds and shady characters sell some personal effects stolen from a dead man; the dinner table of a poor family, where a husband and wife express relief at the death of an unforgiving man to whom they owed money; and the Cratchit household, where the family struggles to cope with the death of Tiny Tim. Scrooge begs to know the identity of the dead man, exasperated in his attempts to understand the lesson of the silent ghost. Suddenly, he finds himself in a churchyard where the spirit points him toward a freshly dug grave. Scrooge approaches the grave and reads the inscription on the headstone: EBENEZER SCROOGE.
Appalled, Scrooge clutches at the spirit and begs him to undo the events of his nightmarish vision. He promises to honor Christmas from deep within his heart and to live by the moralizing lessons of Past, Present, and Future. The spirit’s hand begins to tremble, and, as Scrooge continues to cry out for mercy, the phantom’s robe shrinks and collapses. Scrooge, again, finds himself returned to the relative safety of his own bed.