HORATIO        What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

That beetles o’er his base into the sea,

And there assume some other horrible form

Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason

And draw you into madness? Think of it:

The very place puts toys of desperation

Without more motive into every brain

That looks so many fathoms to the sea

And hears it roar beneath.    (1.4.69-78)

Horatio makes another extended effort to persuade Hamlet not to go with the Ghost and, being Horatio, he’s trying to reason with his friend, suggesting scenarios, have you really thought this through? What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord? what if the Ghost takes you to the sea? Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff that beetles o’er his base into the sea—or up to the top of the cliff, its very edge, overhanging (beetles—as in brows—suggests a dreadful frowning face, too, making this even more horrific, its scale enormous; contracted in one brow of woe, nature now, not just nation) and there assume some other horrible form which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness? The Ghost could take on another shape, an even scarier one! An actual devil! (Shakespeare is filing this away for Poor Tom, Gloucester, and Dover Cliff in King Lear, a few years down the line.) Horatio’s taking Hamlet to the edge, and the audience too. The monstrosity and horror of what he’s suggesting is underscored by his lengthening sentences—growing like the monster he’s conjuring—but also his desperation, Hamlet likes words and reason and TALK, surely Horatio can talk him out of this? Also, reason, perhaps the suggestion that the Ghost might make him act irrationally, abandon what he often seems to hold most dear, his brain—perhaps that might work?

THINK of it, says Horatio, that’s what you do, just pause and think this through, picture it. The very place—the clifftop—puts toys of desperation without more motive into every brain that looks so many fathoms to the sea and hears it roar beneath. Who hasn’t felt a bit funny at the top of a cliff like that, looking down at the sea below, hearing its noise? Who hasn’t wondered if it would matter so very much just to—? And that’s without being in the state you’re in, the motive that you have already. I KNOW: and in the second part of this speech he’s dropped my lord, as he appeals to his friend. Horatio knows Hamlet so well, or thinks he does: his devotion to reason, his self-image as an intelligent, rational person—and also the fact that he is currently grief-stricken, angry, confused, and deeply depressed.