Enter FORTINBRAS with [his train and] the Ambassadors.

FORTINBRAS Where is this sight?

HORATIO                   What is it you would see?

If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.

FORTINBRAS This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell

That thou so many princes at a shot

So bloodily hast struck?        (5.2.346-351)

Fortinbras! Named in the play’s first scene, encountered for a mere handful of lines in the previous act, and now here he is, apparently in charge. His train will be whatever the production can muster, and the Ambassadors too, but Fortinbras needs to have enough gravitas to conclude this show, because it’s not long to go now. He’s been briefed at least a bit: where is this sight? I know something terrible has happened here, but I need to see it, get across the situation asap. Horatio’s helpless, but perhaps with a bitter edge: what is it you would see? come to have a good look, have you? rubbernecking? Because if what you’ve come to see is aught of woe or wonder—anything terrible, spectacular, distressing—then you’ve absolutely come to the right place; cease your search. It’s all here. Fortinbras strikes the right note, a soldier’s note, but dignified, and yes, wondering: this quarry cries on havoc. What appalling destruction, what violence, what chaos! This is a massacre, wanton slaughter! (Havoc is the battlefield command which permits, even encourages soldiers to kill indiscriminately.) And he’s grimly eloquent, too: O proud Death, what feast is toward in thine eternal cell that thou so many princes at a shot so bloodily hast struck? He imagines a great dinner party hosted by death, with a royal guest list to die for, as it were: look, a king, a queen, a prince! (and Laertes too). (Or he could be imagining Death as a cannibal host. Or indeed both. There’s a nod back to the long tradition of the bloody banquet, part of this play’s heritage.) But all these, at once? What’s HAPPENED here?