A Christmas Carol - Lee Wilson from Charles Dickens

This Play is the copyright of the Author and must NOT be Performed without the Author's PRIOR consent

I have endeavoured in this ghostly little book,
to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put
my readers out of humour with themselves,
with each other, with the season, or with me.
May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no
one wish to lay it.
Their faithful friend and servant,
Charles Dickens
December 1843

Cast of Characters
*Doubling, tripling, etc. of characters is to the director’s discretion. 8 actors minimum. Many small roles can be cut.

Dickens (a narrator) Nonbinary
Older Ebenezer Scrooge Male
Clerk (Bob Cratchit) Male
Nephew (Fred) Male
1st Chugger Nonbinary
2nd Chugger Nonbinary
Homeless Boy Nonbinary
Marley Nonbinary
First Spirit Nonbinary
Fan Female
Fezziwig Male
Apprentice Scrooge Nonbinary
Dick Nonbinary
Belle Female
Mrs Fezziwig Female (Silent part. Dance choreography)
Second Spirit Nonbinary
Mrs Cratchit Female
Martha Cratchit Female
Peter Cratchit Male
Niece (Fred’s Wife) Female
Niece’s Sister Female
Party Goer 1 Nonbinary
Party Goer 2 Nonbinary
Party Goer 3 Nonbinary
Party Goer 4 Nonbinary
Third Spirit Nonbinary
Businessman 1 Nonbinary
Businessman 2 Nonbinary
Businessman 3 Nonbinary
Wealthy Man 1 Nonbinary
Wealthy Man 2 Nonbinary
Old Joe Male
Woman 1 Female
Mrs Dilber Female
Man in Faded Black Male (Silent part.)
Caroline Female
Husband Male
The Boy Nonbinary
Person Nonbinary
Girl Female

Nonbinary - can be played by female, male, transgender, genderqueer, or nonbinary individual.


Page 1
STAVE I

Marley’s Ghost

Close your eyes and imagine 1843. What do you see? What do you smell? This is where we are. A distinguished person enters. They look like a poet. Educated. Other worldly. You immediately feel at ease with them. A comfort. They have been summoned to talk to the audience. They are here for a purpose. As the narrator speaks, we see Jacob Marley’s quiet funeral. What the narrator evokes you may show any way you see best in the background. The story begins.


DICKENS: Jacob Marley. To begin with: he was dead.
The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief
mourner. Ebenezer Scrooge signed it. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Excuse me, I don’t
mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail.
I have, myself, regarded a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the
wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the
country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a doornail. Did Scrooge know he was dead? Indeed, they had been business partners for
many years. Not only that, but Scrooge was also his sole executor and administrator. Scrooge his
sole friend. His sole mourner. Scrooge himself, not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event,
solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. But, back to my original point, there is no doubt that
Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the
story I am going to relate.

The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. But Scrooge answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh, he was a tight-fisted, squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chills him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. Nobody in the street ever stopped him to say, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you?’, and dogs’ tails would wag at his malignant eyes. But what did Scrooge care! He thrived from it. Scrooge’s pores constantly spread a warning to all human sympathy to keep its distance.

So, so, so. (They turn an hourglass) Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. The people outside walking in the street could be heard wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, because of the cold, bleak, biting weather. It was now dark, with many employees already at home enjoying well-deserved rest with their families. Candles flared in the windows as Scrooge kept his eye upon a dismal little cell through his big office’s door - his clerk.

Page 2

So, so, so. (They turn an hourglass) Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve – old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. The people outside walking in the street could be heard wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, because of the cold, bleak, biting weather. It was now dark, with many employees already at home enjoying well-deserved rest with their families. Candles flared in the windows as Scrooge kept his eye upon a dismal little cell through his big office’s door - his clerk.
SCROOGE: You have plenty of heat from your candle. Do you see me with a big fire?
NEPHEW: (entering from street) A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!
SCROOGE: Bah! Humbug!
NEPHEW: Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don’t mean that, I am sure.
SCROOGE: I do. Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?
What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.
NEPHEW: Come, then. What right have you to be dismal?
What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.
SCROOGE: Bah! Humbug.
NEPHEW: Don’t be cross, uncle!
SCROOGE: What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this?
What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding
yourself a year older, but not an hour richer. If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about
with “Merry Christmas” on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a
stake of holly through his heart.
NEPHEW: Uncle!
SCROOGE: Nephew! Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine.
There’s another fellow, my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking
about merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.

Two people enter from the street.

1st CHUGGER: (holding a book and papers) Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe.
Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?
SCROOGE: Mr Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago,
this very night.
2nd CHUGGER: We have no doubt his charitable-ness is well represented by
his surviving partner.
1st CHUGGER: At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, it is more than
usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute,
who suffer greatly at the present time.
2nd CHUGGER: Many thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.
SCROOGE: Are there no prisons?

Page 3

2nd CHUGGER: Plenty of prisons.
SCROOGE: And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?
1st CHUGGER: They are. I wish I could say they were not.
SCROOGE: We still have minimum wage and shelters?
2nd CHUGGER: Both, sir.
SCROOGE: Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to
stop them in their useful course. I’m very glad to hear it.
2nd CHUGGER: Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind
or body to the multitude, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some
meat and drink and means of warmth.
1st CHUGGER: What shall I put you down for?
SCROOGE: Nothing.
1st CHUGGER: You wish to be anonymous?
SCROOGE: Since you ask me what I wish, I wish to be left alone. I can’t afford to make
idle people merry. I help to support the system and establishments I have mentioned.
2nd CHUGGER: Many can’t survive off that, many can’t go there; and most would rather die.
SCROOGE: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population. Besides – excuse me – I don’t know that.
1st CHUGGER: But you might know it.
SCROOGE: It’s not my business. I don’t interfere with other people’s and don’t interfere
with mine. My business occupies me constantly. Good afternoon.

They exit.

NEPHEW: Uncle.
SCROOGE: Leave it alone.
NEPHEW: I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from
the veneration due to its sacred name and origin – as a good time; a kind, forgiving,
charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when
people seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people
below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
of creatures bound on other journeys. Though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in
my pocket, uncle, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God
bless it!

The clerk involuntarily applauds.

SCROOGE: (To the clerk) Let me hear another sound from you and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation!

Page 4

SCROOGE: You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don’t go to Parliament.
NEPHEW: Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.
SCROOGE: Why did you get married? But why? Why?
NEPHEW: Because I fell in love.
SCROOGE: Good afternoon.

Nephew goes to leave.

SCROOGE: (Under his breath) Because you fell in love.

Nephew stops and turns.

NEPHEW: Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as
a reason for not coming now? I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we
be friends?
SCROOGE: Good afternoon.
NEPHEW: I am sorry, with all my heart. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas,
and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, uncle.
SCROOGE: Good afternoon.
NEPHEW: And a Happy New Year!
SCROOGE: Good afternoon!

Nephew stops at outer door to bestow greetings of the season to the clerk.

DICKENS: Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself. The
ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out
of a Gothic window in the wall, struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with
tremulous vibrations as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. Outside,
the brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of
the windows, glorious pageants began, the Lord Mayor gave orders to keep Christmas as
it should be, and even the hard done by little tailor, stirred up tomorrow’s pudding in his
garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy beef. A lonely homeless person
even walked by and began to sing down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a
Christmas Carol. But at the first sound of…
HOMELESS ‘God bless you, merry Gentlemen! May nothing you dismay!’
BOY:

Scrooge slams a ruler down on his desk.

DICKENS: Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror.

Page 5

SCROOGE: You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?
CLERK: If quite convenient, sir.
SCROOGE: It’s not convenient and it’s not fair. If I was to stop you half a crown for it,
you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound? And yet, you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay
a day’s wages for no work.
CLERK: It’s only once a year, sir.
SCROOGE: A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December! Be
here all the earlier next morning.
CLERK: Thank you, sir.

DICKENS: The clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist,
ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, in honour of its being Christmas
Eve. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all
the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s book, went home to
bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. It was old
enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all
let out as offices. The yard was dark, and the fog and the frost so hung about the black
old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in
mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door. Let it
also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his
last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon.

We hear Marley’s voice calling Scrooge in the distance.

DICKENS: And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge,
having his key in the lock of the door…

Scrooge see’s Marley’s face on the knocker on the door.

DICKENS: Saw in the knocker – not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

The face disappears.

DICKENS: To say that he was startled, would be untrue. He shut the door; and he did
look cautiously behind it.
SCROOGE: Pooh. pooh!

Page 6

Scrooge walks across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he goes. He enters his room, nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, nobody in the closet, nobody under the bed, nobody under his dressing-gown.

DICKENS: Quite satisfied, he closed his door. He took off his cravat, put on his
dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sits down before the fire to take his gruel.
He stared into the fire, eating, listening…
SCROOGE: Pooh.

Marley’s face swallows up the whole fireplace. Scrooge spits up some gruel.

SCROOGE: Humbug!

Scrooge leans back into his chair and closes his eyes.
A disused bell, hanging in the room, begins to swing lightly. It gets more violent.
Many bells throughout the house begin to ring. They come to a crescendo and stop at once.
We hear chains and footsteps outside the bedroom door at a distance. They get closer.
They arrive right outside Scrooge’s door. Silence.
The door opens. Scrooge runs to his bed, jumps in, and covers himself with the sheets.
We see footsteps enter and travel towards scrooge’s bed.
As they arrive at the bed, Scrooge comes out from under the covers.

SCROOGE: It’s humbug still! I won’t believe it.

Marley just appears. He is in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots;
the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head.
The chain he draws is clasped around his middle. It is long and wound about him like a tail.
The chain is made of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought
in steel. He is transparent or illuminating.

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.
SCROOGE: Can you – can you sit down?
MARLEY: I can.
SCROOGE: Do it, then.
MARLEY: You don’t believe in me.

Page 7

SCROOGE: I don’t
MARLEY: Why do you doubt your senses?
SCROOGE: Because, a little thing affects them. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot
of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an under-done potato. There’s more of gravy
than of grave about you, whatever you are! Humbug.

Marley raises a frightful cry and shakes their chain with such a dismal and appalling noise.

SCROOGE: Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?
MARLEY: Do you believe in me or not?
SCROOGE: I do, I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?
MARLEY: It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned
to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world – oh, woe is me! – and
witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!

Marley raises a frightful cry and shakes their chain.

SCROOGE: You are chained. Tell me why.
MARLEY: I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?
Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
SCROOGE: Jacob, speak comfort to me, Jacob!
MARLEY: I have none to give. I cannot rest. I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere. My
spirit never walked beyond our counting-house – mark me! – in life my spirit never
roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!
SCROOGE: Seven years dead and travelling all the time!
MARLEY: No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse. Not to know that no space of
regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!
SCROOGE: But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.
MARLEY: Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my
business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. Why did I
walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to
that blessed star which led the wise men to a poor home! Hear me! My time is nearly gone.
SCROOGE: I will.
MARLEY: I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day. That is no light part of
my penance. I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping
my fate. A chance and hope of procuring, Ebenezer.

Page 8

SCROOGE: You were always a good friend to me.
MARLEY: You will be haunted by three spirits.
SCROOGE: Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?
MARLEY: It is.
SCROOGE: I – I think I’d rather not.
MARLEY: Without their visits you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the
first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.
SCROOGE: Couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?
MARLEY: 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. Look to see me no more; and
look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!
DICKENS: The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the
window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It
beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each
other, Marley’s ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. The spectre,
after listening for a moment, became sensible of confused noises in the air…

Incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful
and self-accusatory. Marley joins in the mournful dirge and floats out the window
into the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge follows to the window and looks out.

We hear many ghosts and phantoms moaning and wandering in restless haste.
Some familiar to Scrooge. The noise of the creature’s fade…

Scrooge closes the window and runs over to shut the bedroom door. He waits a second
and tries to say “Humbug” but stops himself at the first syllable. He leaps into bed,
pulls the sheets up to his chin and falls asleep. Lights fade to just a little light over
Scrooge in bed.


Stave 2

The First of the Three Spirits

DICKENS: When Scrooge awoke, it was dark.

Chimes of the neighbouring church bell strike from six to seven, seven to eight,
and regularly up to twelve; then stops. Scrooge listens in astonishment.

Page 9

DICKENS: When Scrooge awoke, it was dark.

Chimes of the neighbouring church bell strike from six to seven, seven to eight,
and regularly up to twelve; then stops. Scrooge listens in astonishment.

SCROOGE: Why, it isn’t possible that I can have slept through a whole day and far into
another night.

Scrooge scrambles out of bed and over to the window. He looks out of the window.
A moment of silence before the chime goes three quarters more.
He remembers the promise of a visitation…

Ding, dong!

SCROOGE: A quarter past.

Ding, dong!

SCROOGE: Half past.

Ding, dong!

SCROOGE: A quarter to it. The hour itself…

Ding, dong!

SCROOGE: (beat) and nothing else!

Lights flash. Curtains of his bed are drawn. A light bleeds from another door into the room.
We hear noises coming from this room. Scrooge slowly approaches the light and the door
and enters the new room. Scrooge finds himself face to face with the unearthly visitor.

DICKENS: Scrooge found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor. It was a strange
figure – like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man. It wore a tunic of the purest
white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
a branch of fresh green holly in its hand and had its dress trimmed with summer flowers.

SCROOGE: Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?
FIRST SPIRIT: I am.

Page 10

SCROOGE: Who, and what are you?
FIRST SPIRIT: I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.
SCROOGE: Long past?
FIRST SPIRIT: No. Your past.
SCROOGE: What business brought you here?
FIRST SPIRIT: Your welfare and reclamation. Take heed.

The spirit reaches out its strong hands and clasps Scrooge gently by the arm.

FIRST SPIRIT: Rise, and walk with me. Bear but a touch of my hand there, and you
shall be upheld in more than this.

As soon as Scrooge touches the Spirit’s hand the world begins to change.

SCROOGE: Good Heaven! I was bred in this place. I was a boy here.
FIRST SPIRIT: Your lip is trembling. You recollect the way?
SCROOGE: Remember it! I could walk it blindfold.
FIRST SPIRIT: Strange to have forgotten it for so many years. Let us go on.
DICKENS: They walked along the road, every gate, and post, and tree; until a little
market-town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
FIRST SPIRIT: These are but shadows of the things that have been. They have
no consciousness of us. The school is not quite deserted. A solitary child, neglected by
his friends, is left there still.
SCROOGE: I know it.
DICKENS: They left the highroad, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a
mansion of dull red brick. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables. They entered a dreary
hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly
furnished, cold, and vast. They went, the ghost and Scrooge, to a door at the back of the
house. Opening, it disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, lined by desks. At one of
these a lonely boy…

The Spirit touches Scrooge on the arm and points to the boy. We hear “God Rest
You Merry, Gentlemen” in the background.

SCROOGE: Poor boy! I wish… but it’s too late now.
FIRST SPIRIT: What is the matter?
SCROOGE: Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I
should like to have given him something: that’s all.
FIRST SPIRIT: (smiles thoughtfully) Let us see another Christmas.