GHOST                        I find thee apt. And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear: ’Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark Is by a forged process of my death Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth, The serpent that did sting thy father’s […]

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 […]

GHOST            I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze […]

Enter GHOST and HAMLET. HAMLET         Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak! I’ll go no further. GHOST            Mark me. HAMLET                     I will. GHOST                                    My hour is almost come When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. HAMLET                     Alas, poor ghost. GHOST            Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold. HAMLET                     Speak, I am bound to hear. GHOST            So […]

HORATIO       He waxes desperate with imagination. MARCELLUS  Let’s follow. ’Tis not fit thus to obey him. HORATIO       Have after. To what issue will this come? MARCELLUS  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. HORATIO       Heaven will direct it. MARCELLUS                          Nay, let’s follow him. (Exeunt.)        (1.4.87-91) Just rounding off the scene, a brief exchange between Horatio and Marcellus to give Hamlet and the Ghost time […]

HAMLET         It waves me still. Go on, I’ll follow thee. MARCELLUS   You shall not go, my lord. HAMLET                                 Hold off your hands. HORATIO        Be ruled, you shall not go. HAMLET                                 My fate cries out And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve. Still am I called – unhand me, gentlemen – By heaven I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me! I say […]

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 […]

MARCELLUS   Look with what courteous action It waves you to a more removed ground, But do not go with it. HORATIO                    No, by no means. HAMLET         It will not speak: then I will follow it. HORATIO        Do not, my lord. HAMLET         Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee, And for my soul – […]

HAMLET                     What may this mean That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say why is this? Wherefore? What should we do? [ GHOST ] beckons. HORATIO        It beckons you to go away with it As if it some impartment did desire To […]

HAMLET                     O answer me, Let me not burst in ignorance but tell Why thy canonized bones hearsed in death Have burst their cerements, why the sepulchre Wherein we saw thee quietly interred Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again.            (1.4.45-51) What’s going on? What does this mean? asks Hamlet, in effect, but mostly—as well as filling silence and shock with words, […]