BARNARDO    How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale.

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on’t?

HORATIO        Before my God, I might not this believe

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS                           Is it not like the King?

HORATIO        As thou art to thyself.            (1.1.52-7)

How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale: how are you doing? pretty shaken, huh? Barnardo can be genuinely concerned, but there can also be a touch of told-you-so: is not this something more than fantasy? Not just a trick of the light, then, or a nightwatch dream? Do you believe us now? And, what think you on’t? what do you reckon, what do you think’s going on? Horatio’s shaken, and sorry not to have believed them earlier, perhaps—but it was unbelievable. Before my God—I swear—I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes. If I hadn’t seen it, right there, right in front of me—I wouldn’t have believed it. I didn’t believe it. Now Marcellus comes in, with his most pressing question: is it not like the King? Do you think that it looks like him, our king that’s so recently died? Oh yes, replies Horatio. As thou art to thyself. The absolute dead spit of him. And the suggestion that the apparition is as like the old king as Marcellus is like himself—conjuring a strange, fleetingly imagined doppelganger—turns up the uncanny dial even further…