GHOST            List, list, O list,

If thou didst ever thy dear father love –

HAMLET         O God!

GHOST            – Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!

HAMLET         Murder!

GHOST            Murder most foul – as in the best it is –

But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

HAMLET         Haste me to know’t that I with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love

May sweep to my revenge.   (1.5.22-31)

Hamlet is, of course, wound up to the highest pitch of anticipation by that long speech that doesn’t TELL him anything. But the Ghost’s building up to it: list, list, O list—listen to me! (I’M LISTENING!) If thou didst ever thy dear father love—just to up the tension and make the stakes even higher—O God! Hamlet quite properly interjects, what’s this all about, of course I loved you, of course I love you and I always will—and I can tell something big’s coming and I perhaps even guess what it is—revenge his foul and most unnatural murder! Murder! Murder? Yes, MURDER! Murder most foul. It’s infinitely parodiable, and maybe one effect of that now is that it’s teetering on the edge of hysteria, of hysterical laughter, and that energy, if harnessed, is dangerous. A knife’s edge, a cliff-edge, for actors. Murder most foul—as in the best it is—I mean, all murders are bad, but this was terrible, most foul, strange, and unnatural. Unnatural’s the key word there. Tell me more! says Hamlet. I need to know everything, right away.

Haste me to know’t that I with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge. He says he wants to get on with it straight away… He imagines acting as quickly as he can think, not even pausing to speak: think—act. Or even feel—act. He wants to be carried along in an action, an impulse with its own momentum. And he thinks that he can do it, just like that.