Stave One. Marley's Ghost. (Part 3!)

Scrooge leaves his office and stops for dinner at a tavern before going home. We do often see him having dinner, but not always.

We always see Scrooge arriving at his home (which used to be Marley's) so that he can see Marley's face in the door knocker. Dickens specifically says that the knocker is large, but otherwise ordinary. Different versions take their liberties with the design, however.

Once inside, Scrooge goes up some wide, dark stairs. We don't often get a glimpse of the hearse that Scrooge sees, but when we do, it's an eerie effect!

Most versions do include all the bells in the old building ringing at once, but we don't usually see Marley's face appearing in the fancy fireplace. We always hear some chains being dragged, however.

The dragger of said chains is, of course, the ghost of Jacob Marley! He's transparent with a wrapper holding his chin in place. Pretty scary, although Scrooge tries to hide his fear with his quip about Marley being more gravy than grave. He's got some snappy one-liners!

As I understand it,  Marley's sartorial traits (pigtail, waistcoat, etc.) indicate that he might be a generation older than Scrooge, as they were out of fashion in 1843, even allowing for the seven years he had been dead. Perhaps neither here nor there, but interesting.

So, Marley goes on for a bit about how he has to wander the earth dragging his chains as penance for the life he lived and how he's arranged for some spirits to teach Scrooge the error of his ways.

One thing that's definitely played around with in various adaptations is when the ghosts are supposed to appear, but in the book, the first is to appear the next night at 1:00 am, the second the next night again at 1:00 am, then the third the next night at midnight. So, that's pretty stretched out!

Before he leaves, Marley shows Scrooge some phantoms outside of his window. This is sometimes included, sometimes not, but it's usually a striking image.

One thing of note (or not) is how Scrooge is dressed at this point, Dickens mentions that before Marley's ghost came in, Scrooge had taken "off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap." And after Marley's ghost leaves, Dickens says Scrooge "went straight to bed, without undressing." It's so common to see Scrooge wearing a nightshirt in his various incarnations, you'd almost think that was true to the source material!

OK, now that we've got that settled, we're ready for some ghostly interaction!