Faculty of English

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, […]

HAMLET         Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane.        (1.4.39-45) Hamlet’s properly shocked, and properly frightened, but manages to come up […]

HAMLET                     – that these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect (Being Nature’s livery or Fortune’s star), His virtues else, be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault: the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal – Enter GHOST. HORATIO                    Look, my lord, […]

HAMLET         This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations: They clepe us drunkards and with swinish phrase Soil our addition, and indeed it takes From our achievements, though performed at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. So oft it chances in particular men That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth wherein they are not guilty (Since nature […]