Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar.

Question it, Horatio.

Hor. 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!

Mar. It is offended.

Ber.

See, it stalks away!

50

Hor. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Mar. "Tis gone, and will not answer.

[Exit Ghost.

Ber. How now, Horatio! you tremble and look

pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on 't?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Is it not like the king?

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

Such was the very armor he had on

When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.

60

To harry and to harass have the same origin. Milton has the word in Comus: "Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear.""Question it," in the next line, is the reading of the folio; other old copies have "Speak to it."-H. N. H.

63. "He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice"; Q. 1, Q. 2, F. 1, "pollax," variously interpreted as "Polacks," "poleaxe," &c.; there is

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not;

But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,

This bodes some strange eruption to our state. Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

70

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore
task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day:
Who is 't that can inform me?

Hor.

That can I;
At least the whisper goes so. Our last king, 80
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Ham-
let-

For so this side of our known world esteem'd
him-

very little to be said against the former interpretation, unless it be that "the ambitious Norway" in the previous sentence would lead one to expect “the sledded Polack,” a commendable reading originally proposed by Pope.-I. G.

2

d slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,

Tell ratified by law and heraldry,

Ad forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

90

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same cove

nant

And carriage of the article design'd,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimproved metal hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in 't: which is no other— 100
As it doth well appear unto our state—

But to recover of us, by strong hand

And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of is our watch and the chief head
Of this post-hast and romage in the land.
Ber. I think it be no other but e'en so:

Well may it sort, that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch, so like the
king

That was and is the question of these wars.

110

108-125. These lines occur in the Qq., but are omitted in Ff.I. G.

thing

ure

rotten in

HorA mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

Denmark

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: 120
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

Re-enter Ghost.

But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,

If there be any good thing to be done,

That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life

130

113. “palmy state"; that is, victorious; the Palm being the emblem

of victory.-H. N. H.

118. "Disasters"; ominous signs, probably an eclipse.-C. H. H.

Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,

For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! [The cock crows.]
Stop it, Marcellus.

Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
Hor. Do, if it will not stand.

Ber.

Hor.

"Tis here!

'Tis here!

140

Mar. 'Tis gone!

[Exit Ghost.

about We do it wrong, being so majestical,

to

tall

To offer it the show of violence;

For it is, as the air, invulnerable,

And our vain blows malicious mockery. Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing I have heard,

Upon a fearful summons.

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, 150
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long: 160

157. "crowing of the cock"; this is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus, giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius of Tyanna, says, "it vanished with a little gleam as soon as the cock crowed." There is a Hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio's speech.-H. N. H.