Hamlet

Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night; That if again this apparition come, He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Horatio

Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.

Bernardo

Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story What we have two nights seen.

Horatio

Well, sit we down, And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Bernardo

Last night of all, When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, The bell then beating one⁠—

Enter Ghost.

Marcellus

Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Bernardo

In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.

Marcellus

Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

Bernardo

Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.

Horatio

Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.

Bernardo

It would be spoke to.

Marcellus

Question it, Horatio.

Horatio

What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

Come away. Exeunt all but Hamlet.

Hamlet

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month⁠— Let me not think on’t⁠—Frailty, thy name is woman!⁠— A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow’d my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears:⁠—why she, even she⁠— O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer⁠—married with my uncle, My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good: But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.

Horatio

Look, my lord, it comes!

Enter Ghost.

Hamlet

Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d, 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 sepulchre, 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 With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do? Ghost beckons Hamlet.

Horatio

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

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.

Hamlet

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, 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 on 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—

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.

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 life Now wears his crown.

Hamlet

O my prophetic soul! My uncle!

Hamlet

Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern

Prison, my lord!

Hamlet

Denmark’s a prison.

Rosencrantz

Then is the world one.

Hamlet

A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.

Rosencrantz

We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet

Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz

Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

Hamlet

O God, I could be bounded in a nut-shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.