Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

40

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from

hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,

Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws,

To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition

50

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?
[Ghost beckons Hamlet.

Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.

Mar.

Hor.

Look, with what courteous action 60

It waves you to a more removed ground:

But do not go with it.

No, by no means.

Ham. It will not speak; then I will follow it.

Hor. Do not, my lord.

Ham.

Why, what should be the fear?

I do not set my life at a pin's fee;

And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?

It waves me forth again: I'll follow it.

Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

Ham.

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.

It waves me still.

Go on; I'll follow thee. Mar. You shall not go, my lord. Ham.

70

Hold off your hands. 80

Hor. Be ruled; you shall not go.
Ham.

My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen.

By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.

[Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.

Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.
Mar. Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.
Hor. Have after. To what issue will this come?
Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

90

Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no

Ham.

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

Ham.

To what I shall unfold.

Speak; I am bound to hear. Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. Ham. What?

Ghost. I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,

ΙΟ

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 thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love—

Ham. O God!

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Ham. Murder!

Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is,

But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Ham. Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge.

Ghost.

Ham.

I find thee apt;

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,

20

30

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 life
Now wears his crown.

My uncle!

Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!-won to his shameful lust

The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen :
O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!

But virtue, as it never will be moved,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed

And prey on garbage.

But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigor it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

50

60

The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; 70 And a most instant tetter bark'd about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,

All my smooth body.

Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand

Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd: