The Night Watch

As the curtain rises on Elsinore castle, we see Francisco, alone on the ramparts.

“Who’s there?”

A figure appears out of the inky night and replies, “’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.” Bernardo has faithfully arrived to relieve Francisco of his guard duties. Following closely behind are Horatio and Marcellus, who join in taking over the midnight patrol. Together, they encounter the ghost of the recently deceased king, who has returned to warn his son, the young prince, about his uncle Claudius.

This opening scene of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet– a transfer of duty under the cover of night – not only represents the nefarious regicide that has unsettled the realm, but an ominous foretelling of one to come.

The spectral encounter prompts Marcellus to famously observe, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” For most of us, what happens at night is a mystery. Yet, most of us are aware that, while we sleep, a parallel universe takes over and accomplishes many of the necessary tasks that not only keep the midnight hours, but also the daytime ones running safely and smoothly.

Anyone who has walked by the heaps of garbage bags piled on New York City streets at night will probably have also noticed that they’re gone by morning. Packages dispatched before 5 p.m. today can miraculously arrive at a doorstep on the other side of the globe by the end of tomorrow. Planes and trains are cleaner for the first ride of the day than the last. And, if the baby decides to come while everyone else is asleep, the hospital is open and ready to assist.

I was reminded of this early one morning at a diner, when I witnessed a group of nurses in colorful scrubs pile into a booth and order a round of beers. My confusion was resolved by the balloons and gifts that accompanied them. They had just finished their overnight duties at the hospital and were celebrating a colleague’s birthday. I was having breakfast; they were having dinner. This happy occasion is a halting contrast to the lost souls in Nighthawks(1942) by Edward Hopper, the American painter known for his study of aloneness. In his famous midnight vignette, he depicts a small group of individuals perched at a diner counter, who, despite being together in the same space, seem distant and detached, not only from each other but to the world at large. Instead of offering a warm and welcoming glow to the dark and empty city streets outside, the all-night diner washes the entire scene in a cold, sterile and sickly green fluorescence, heightening a sense of psychological isolation.

Despite the air of despair, there is a figure of hope among them: the lone server who showed up to work. He tends to them and appears to be the only one attempting to engage with the others. Every time I see this painting, I am thankful for him. I have to think that the nighthawks are too. What would they have done without him? Where would they have gone?

Three hundred years before Hopper, the great Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn painted a very different night scene. Completed in 1642, The Night Watch is perhaps the most celebrated work among the many masterpieces at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. (The full title of this painting is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.)

In contrast to the static emptiness of Nighthawks, Rembrandt’s group portrait is a sprawling composition rich with detail and excitement. It is not a somber study of forlornness. Neither does it tell a story of burden and toil, nor deliver an ominous warning from a ghost. Rather, the painting celebrates a proud company of arquebusiers – musketeers – proudly carrying out their civic duty of patrolling their city at night. They not only seem fearless, but triumphant against all of the things that go bump in the night. If I were a seventeenth-century Dutchman, I would sleep well knowing these fine folks were about.

In 2023, these works of Shakespeare, Hopper and Rembrandt are instructive reminders to consider the half of society that works the shifts that the rest of us don’t. In our modern age of convenience, where 24-hour surveillance cameras, alarm clocks and self-checkout lanes have automated many of the tasks that once required human eyes and hands, we can take for granted the invisible workers whose skills, services and courage remain irreplaceable. But they are there, freighting our goods, fighting fires, vacuuming the hotel lobby and performing emergency surgeries around the clock. They rise ahead of the sun to bake our bread and stock the shelves, or accompany the moon on the way to work as a bus driver, a war correspondent or dispatcher. Thank goodness for the night watch.