PRINCE HAMLET
As the trumpets sounded, he followed them, dutifully, into the great hall, where a richly dressed crowd awaited them. To one side of the thrones stood Polonius and his son, Laertes, to the other the emissaries, Cornelius and Voltimand. Ophelia, he noticed, wasn't there. Crowds terrified her, she had told him, and she often feigned illness when she had to accompany her father to state occasions. He was a bit relieved: At least Polonius won't be forcing her on me as he usually did, he thought. It was the old courtier's fondest desire: to see his daughter married to the prince of the realm. His mother, too, had encouraged him to see more of Ophelia, though his uncle -- now his stepfather -- seemed indifferent. It would be like Claudius, he thought, to want to marry me off to some sour foreign princess as part of a diplomatic arrangement.
He noticed, too, that he was the only person in the hall still in mourning. The black blot on all this array of gold and crimson. He took his place behind and slightly to the left of his mother, now seated on her throne. When his father had been alive, his place was always to King Hamlet's right. But things had changed.
Claudius remained standing, then acknowledged the bows of the assemblage with a nod. Did he keep them bowing a little longer than was necessary? The prince was sure of this.
"Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green," Claudius began, "and that it us befitted to bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom to be contracted in one brow of woe, yet so far hath discretion fought with nature that we with wisest sorrow think on him together with remembrance of ourselves." The royal "we" grated on the prince's nerves, but he held his composure until Claudius began to speak about the wedding that had come so soon after the elder Hamlet's death: "Therefore our sometime sister, now our Queen, th'imperial jointress to this warlike state, have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy, with an auspicious and a dropping eye, with mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, in equal scale weighing delight and dole, taken to wife."
Claudius turned and acknowledged the queen, but also glimpsed a red-faced Hamlet, struggling to keep his emotions in check. He gave a warning frown at the prince, whose fists were clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. Then he turned to acknowledge Polonius: "Nor have we herein barred your better wisdoms, which have freely gone with this affair along. For all," he said, turning to the assembled court, "our thanks."
And then to the business at hand: "Now follows that you know: young Fortinbras, holding a weak supposal of our worth or thinking by our late dear brother's death our state to be disjoint or out of frame -- co-leagued with this dream of his advantage -- he hath not failed to pester us with message importing the surrender of those lands lost by his father with all bands of law to our most valiant brother. So much for him. Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting, thus much the business is: We have here writ to Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras -- who impotent and bedrid scarcely hears of this his nephew's purpose -- to suppress his further gait herein, in that the levies, the lists and full proportions are all made out of his subject." He turned to the emissaries: "And we here dispatch you, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand, for bearers of this greeting to old Norway, giving to you no further personal power to business with the king more than the scope of these delated articles allow." An attendant handed Claudius two scrolls, which he passed along to Voltemand and Cornelius. "Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty."
With low bows, the emissaries promised, "In that and all things we will show our duty."
"We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell," he said, as the emissaries left. Then he turned to Laertes, whose nervousness was apparent. "And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? You told us of some suit -- what is't, Laertes?" Polonius had given his son a little shove, urging him forward. "You cannot speak of reason to the Dane and lose your voice," Claudius said, encouragingly. "What wouldst thou beg, Laertes, that shall not be my offer, not thy asking? The head is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of Denmark to thy father. What wouldst thou have, Laertes?"
"My dread lord," Laertes began, his voice shaking a little, "your leave and favour to return to France, from whence willingly I came to Denmark to show my duty in your coronation, yet now I must confess, that duty done, my thoughts and wishes bend again toward France and bow them to your gracious leave and pardon."
Hamlet suddenly realized why Laertes was so nervous: Claudius had repeatedly stymied his own attempts to return to his studies at Wittenberg. Was Claudius afraid that if he loosened his grip on the younger members of the court, they'd slip from him and join forces with Fortinbras? But Laertes, who had always been held on a tight rein by Polonius, was the last person anyone would suspect of doing that. Claudius had something of the tyrant about him, Hamlet thought.
"Have you your father's leave?" Claudius asked. "What says Polonius?"
"He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave by laboursome petition, and at last upon his will I sealed my hard consent. I do beseech you give him leave to go."
"Take thy fair hour, Laertes, time be thine and thy best graces spend it at thy will." Laertes backed away gratefully as Claudius turned his attention elsewhere: "But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son --"
"A little more than kin, and less than kind," Hamlet muttered, just out of earshot of Claudius, but loud enough for his mother to hear. She frowned disapprovingly.
"How is it that the clouds still hang upon you?" Claudius asked, his gaze surveying Hamlet's black clothing.
"Not so much, my lord," Hamlet replied. "I am too much in the 'son.'"
The queen rose, putting her hand on Claudius's arm. The king was visibly angered by Hamlet's reply. "Good Hamlet," she said, "cast thy nighted color off and let thine eye look like friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou knowst 'tis common all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."
"Ay, madam, it is ... common." He almost spat the word at her, but the queen took no notice.
"If it be why seems it so particular with thee?" She clung to Claudius, whose anger had shifted into a cold disdain for Hamlet.
"'Seems,' madam -- nay it is, I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected haviour of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly. These indeed 'seem,' for they are actions that a man might play, but I have that within which passes show, these but the trappings and the suits of woe."
Claudius gently took the queen's hand from his arm and gave her a reassuring smile. Then he stepped forward, placing himself between mother and son. He assumed a "reasonable" manner, like someone trying to calm a temperamental child -- or a madman. "'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father, but you must know your father lost a father, that father lost his, and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow." His voice grew sterner: "But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness, 'tis unmanly grief, it shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heart unfortified, or mind impatient, an understanding simple and unschooled."
Hamlet listened to all of this, well aware of what Claudius was trying to do: accuse him of being irrational, childish, effeminate, unwilling to accept the inevitable. And the words did sting -- at some level he felt himself to be all of those things.
Perhaps if the king had cut short his accusations, they might have had some effect on Hamlet. But he persisted, growing visibly more angry: "For what we know must be, and is as common" -- the king laid stress on the word Hamlet had earlier thrown back at the queen -- "as any the most vulgar thing to sense -- why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart? Fie, 'tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, to reason most absurd, whose common theme is the death of fathers, and who still hath cried from the first corpse till he that died today 'This must be so.'"
He paused and took his wife's hand, and with that gesture Hamlet realized how she clung to her new husband, how much under his spell he was. She was gazing at Claudius as if hypnotized.
Claudius turned and spoke to him again, more kindly. "We pray you throw to earth this unprevailing woe, and think of us as of a father, for you are the most immediate to our throne, and with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son do I impart toward you."
If Claudius had extended a hand at this moment, he might have taken it. But neither of them made a move. Perhaps Claudius had expected him to acknowledge this declaration and to make some sign of acquiescence, because his kindly manner disappeared and he said, coldly, "For your intent in going back to school in Wittenberg it is most retrograde to our desire."
Hamlet was thunderstruck. He had been on the verge of requesting the return to his studies, taking advantage of the king's earlier agreement to Laertes's request.
Claudius continued, "And we beseech you bend to remain here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son." Each word felt like a lash across his face.
And then his mother stepped forward and took his hand. "Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg."
"I shall in all my best obey you, madam," Hamlet replied, coldly and stiffly. This was the deepest betrayal of all.
Then Claudius moved in and took the queen's hand away from him. "Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply," he said with a forced joviality. "Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come -- this gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof no jocund health that Denmark drinks today but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell and the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away."
And suddenly the great hall was empty.
He stood there alone, fighting the waves of anger and nausea that swept over him. Then he looked down at his hand, the one that his mother had recently grasped. There were red marks on the palm where his own fingernails had recently dug in. O that this too too sallied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew, he thought. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter. He had never thought of suicide before -- the insult of his uncle's oily arrogance, his deliberate thwarting of Hamlet's desire to escape from Denmark, and most of all his mother's infatuation with the king, her craven compliance with his wishes, these had brought it to mind. What would he do here other than wait attendance on Claudius as his "chiefest courtier"? 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.
His mother -- his mother! Resentment swirled around her. She had been so young when he was born, barely fifteen, that sometimes it was as if they had grown up together, both of them idolizing his father. That it should come thus: 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.
He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if to drive the thoughts away. Heaven and earth, must I remember? Why, she should hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on. And yet within a month.... He shook his head. (Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is Woman), a little month, or e'er those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body, like Niobe, all tears. And tears came to his own eyes. Why, she -- O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer -- married with my uncle, my father's brother (but no more like my father than I to Hercules). He tried to pull himself together, but another sob racked his body. Within a month, ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing of 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.
He saw three men enter the hall, and turned away from them, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and pulling himself together. But break, my heart, he told himself, for I must hold my tongue.
"Hail to your worship," he heard a voice behind him say. He turned, warily, thinking that Claudius might have sent some of his henchmen.
"I am glad to see you well --" he began, formally, but broke off in surprise. "Horatio, or I do forget myself!" he exclaimed.
"The same, my lord," Horatio said, bowing, "and your poor servant ever."
"Sir, my good friend," Hamlet said, embracing Horatio, "I'll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?" Before Horatio could answer, however, he recognized another of the trio: "Marcellus!"
"My good lord," Marcellus said.
"I am very glad to see you," Hamlet said. He was unacquainted with Barnardo, but gave him a courteous "Good even, sir," which Barnardo acknowledged with a bow. Hamlet turned to Horatio again: "But what in faith make you from Wittenberg?"
"A truant disposition, good my lord," Horatio said, stalling until he could find the right moment to make his revelation.
A suspicion began to grow in Hamlet's mind. Horatio would not have taken an unsanctioned leave from the university without good cause. Or perhaps it was a bad one: Had Claudius somehow enlisted his friend to lure Hamlet to his side? "I would not hear your enemy say so," Hamlet said, referring to Horatio's truancy. "Nor shall you do my ear that violence to make it truster of your own report against yourself." He fixed Horatio with a sterner, more questioning gaze: "I know you are no truant; but what is your affair in Elsinore?" In the distance a cannon sounded, and Hamlet realized that Claudius was at his drinking games. "We'll teach you for to drink ere you depart," he said, gesturing toward the noise.
"My lord, I came to see your father's funeral," Horatio began, referring to his earlier visit as preparation for his account of the ghost's appearance.
Hamlet interrupted him. "I prithee do not mock me, fellow student, I think it was to see my mother's wedding." He hoped to shock Horatio into revealing his true allegiance.
Horatio, who had been briefed by Marcellus on Hamlet's anger at his mother's remarriage, said, "Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon."
Hamlet gave him a keen look. "Thrift," he said, "thrift, Horatio: The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." He gave a grim smile at the bitter joke, but then bowed his head: "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day, Horatio." He lifted his head and gazed off into the distance. "My father, methinks I see my father," he said, sorrowfully.
Surprised, Horatio followed Hamlet's gaze and blurted out, "Where, my lord?" half expecting to see the ghost materialize in the hall.
Hamlet looked at him, puzzled. "In my mind's eye, Horatio," he said.
"I saw him once -- 'a was a goodly king," Horatio said.
"'A was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
"My lord, I think I saw him yesternight," Horatio said, urgency in his voice.
"Saw, who?"
"My lord, the King your father."
"The King my father?" Had Horatio gone mad?
Horatio pulled himself together. "Season your admiration for a while with an attent ear till I may deliver upon the witness of these gentlemen," he indicated his companions, "this marvel to you."
"For God's love let me hear!"
"Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch in the dead waste and middle of the night been thus encountered: A figure like your father armed at point, exactly cap-à-pie appears before them and with solemn march goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walked by their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes within his truncheon's length whilst they, distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and speak not to him."
Hamlet stood there, holding his breath, as Horatio continued, "This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did, and I with them the third night kept the watch where, as they had delivered, both in time, form of the thing, each word made true and good, the apparition comes. I knew your father," he assured Hamlet again, "these hands are not more like."
"But where was this?" Hamlet asked, turning to Marcellus for corroboration.
"My lord, upon the platform where we watch."
"Did you not speak to it?"
"My lord, I did," Horatio spoke up, "but answer made it none. Yet once methought it lifted up it head and did address itself to motion like as it would speak. But even then the morning cock crew loud and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight."
This is impossible, Hamlet thought, trying to regain his bearings. "'Tis very strange," was the only thing he could say.
"As I do live, my honoured lord, 'tis true," Horatio insisted, "and we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know if it."
"Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me," he said to them. The ghost of my father, he thought. Or some sort of cruel trick? He had to pursue this. "Hold you the watch tonight?"
"We do, my lord," Horatio replied, indicating himself and Marcellus.
He had to think, to test their story. "Armed, say you?" he asked Marcellus, who replied, "Armed, my lord."
"From top to toe?"
All three men agreed, "My lord, from head to foot."
"Then saw you not his face." Surely it was some courtier playing a malicious joke.
"O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up," Horatio assured him.
"What looked he -- frowningly?"
"A countenance more in sorrow than anger," Horatio said, and Marcellus nodded in agreement.
"Pale, or red?"
"Nay, very pale."
"And fixed his eyes upon you?"
"Most constantly."
This can't have happened, but he was inclined against his better judgment to believe Horatio. If only it had appeared to him. "I would I had been there," he said.
"It would have much amazed you," Horatio said.
"Very like," Hamlet said, his tone slightly mocking the obviousness of Horatio's statement. "Stayed it long?"
Horatio thought for a moment and replied, "While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred."
"Longer," said Marcellus, and Barnardo echoed him, "Longer."
"Not when I saw't," Horatio protested.
"His beard was grizzled, no?" Hamlet asked.
"It was as I have seen it in his life," Horatio answered, "a sable silvered."
The reply seemed to persuade Hamlet to action. "I will watch tonight. Perchance 'twill walk again."
"I warrant it will," Horatio assured him.
"If it assume my noble father's person I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight let it be tenable in your silence still and whatsomever else shall hap tonight give it an understanding but no tongue, I will requite your loves. So fare you well, upon the platform 'twixt eleven and twelve I'll visit you."
"Our duty to your honour," Marcellus said, and with a bow the three men took their leave.
My father's spirit -- in arms! he thought. All is not well; I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come. Till then sit still my soul -- foul deeds will rise though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes.
"Not so much, my lord," Hamlet replied. "I am too much in the 'son.'"
The queen rose, putting her hand on Claudius's arm. The king was visibly angered by Hamlet's reply. "Good Hamlet," she said, "cast thy nighted color off and let thine eye look like friend on Denmark. Do not for ever with thy vailed lids seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou knowst 'tis common all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."
"Ay, madam, it is ... common." He almost spat the word at her, but the queen took no notice.
"If it be why seems it so particular with thee?" She clung to Claudius, whose anger had shifted into a cold disdain for Hamlet.
"'Seems,' madam -- nay it is, I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, cold mother, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forced breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected haviour of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly. These indeed 'seem,' for they are actions that a man might play, but I have that within which passes show, these but the trappings and the suits of woe."
Claudius gently took the queen's hand from his arm and gave her a reassuring smile. Then he stepped forward, placing himself between mother and son. He assumed a "reasonable" manner, like someone trying to calm a temperamental child -- or a madman. "'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father, but you must know your father lost a father, that father lost his, and the survivor bound in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow." His voice grew sterner: "But to persever in obstinate condolement is a course of impious stubbornness, 'tis unmanly grief, it shows a will most incorrect to heaven, a heart unfortified, or mind impatient, an understanding simple and unschooled."
Hamlet listened to all of this, well aware of what Claudius was trying to do: accuse him of being irrational, childish, effeminate, unwilling to accept the inevitable. And the words did sting -- at some level he felt himself to be all of those things.
Perhaps if the king had cut short his accusations, they might have had some effect on Hamlet. But he persisted, growing visibly more angry: "For what we know must be, and is as common" -- the king laid stress on the word Hamlet had earlier thrown back at the queen -- "as any the most vulgar thing to sense -- why should we in our peevish opposition take it to heart? Fie, 'tis a fault to heaven, a fault against the dead, a fault to nature, to reason most absurd, whose common theme is the death of fathers, and who still hath cried from the first corpse till he that died today 'This must be so.'"
He paused and took his wife's hand, and with that gesture Hamlet realized how she clung to her new husband, how much under his spell he was. She was gazing at Claudius as if hypnotized.
Claudius turned and spoke to him again, more kindly. "We pray you throw to earth this unprevailing woe, and think of us as of a father, for you are the most immediate to our throne, and with no less nobility of love than that which dearest father bears his son do I impart toward you."
If Claudius had extended a hand at this moment, he might have taken it. But neither of them made a move. Perhaps Claudius had expected him to acknowledge this declaration and to make some sign of acquiescence, because his kindly manner disappeared and he said, coldly, "For your intent in going back to school in Wittenberg it is most retrograde to our desire."
Hamlet was thunderstruck. He had been on the verge of requesting the return to his studies, taking advantage of the king's earlier agreement to Laertes's request.
Claudius continued, "And we beseech you bend to remain here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son." Each word felt like a lash across his face.
And then his mother stepped forward and took his hand. "Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet. I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg."
"I shall in all my best obey you, madam," Hamlet replied, coldly and stiffly. This was the deepest betrayal of all.
Then Claudius moved in and took the queen's hand away from him. "Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply," he said with a forced joviality. "Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come -- this gentle and unforced accord of Hamlet sits smiling to my heart, in grace whereof no jocund health that Denmark drinks today but the great cannon to the clouds shall tell and the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again, re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away."
And suddenly the great hall was empty.
He stood there alone, fighting the waves of anger and nausea that swept over him. Then he looked down at his hand, the one that his mother had recently grasped. There were red marks on the palm where his own fingernails had recently dug in. O that this too too sallied flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew, he thought. Or that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter. He had never thought of suicide before -- the insult of his uncle's oily arrogance, his deliberate thwarting of Hamlet's desire to escape from Denmark, and most of all his mother's infatuation with the king, her craven compliance with his wishes, these had brought it to mind. What would he do here other than wait attendance on Claudius as his "chiefest courtier"? 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.
His mother -- his mother! Resentment swirled around her. She had been so young when he was born, barely fifteen, that sometimes it was as if they had grown up together, both of them idolizing his father. That it should come thus: 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.
He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if to drive the thoughts away. Heaven and earth, must I remember? Why, she should hang on him as if increase of appetite had grown by what it fed on. And yet within a month.... He shook his head. (Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is Woman), a little month, or e'er those shoes were old with which she followed my poor father's body, like Niobe, all tears. And tears came to his own eyes. Why, she -- O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer -- married with my uncle, my father's brother (but no more like my father than I to Hercules). He tried to pull himself together, but another sob racked his body. Within a month, ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing of 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.
He saw three men enter the hall, and turned away from them, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and pulling himself together. But break, my heart, he told himself, for I must hold my tongue.
"Hail to your worship," he heard a voice behind him say. He turned, warily, thinking that Claudius might have sent some of his henchmen.
"I am glad to see you well --" he began, formally, but broke off in surprise. "Horatio, or I do forget myself!" he exclaimed.
"The same, my lord," Horatio said, bowing, "and your poor servant ever."
"Sir, my good friend," Hamlet said, embracing Horatio, "I'll change that name with you. And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?" Before Horatio could answer, however, he recognized another of the trio: "Marcellus!"
"My good lord," Marcellus said.
"I am very glad to see you," Hamlet said. He was unacquainted with Barnardo, but gave him a courteous "Good even, sir," which Barnardo acknowledged with a bow. Hamlet turned to Horatio again: "But what in faith make you from Wittenberg?"
"A truant disposition, good my lord," Horatio said, stalling until he could find the right moment to make his revelation.
A suspicion began to grow in Hamlet's mind. Horatio would not have taken an unsanctioned leave from the university without good cause. Or perhaps it was a bad one: Had Claudius somehow enlisted his friend to lure Hamlet to his side? "I would not hear your enemy say so," Hamlet said, referring to Horatio's truancy. "Nor shall you do my ear that violence to make it truster of your own report against yourself." He fixed Horatio with a sterner, more questioning gaze: "I know you are no truant; but what is your affair in Elsinore?" In the distance a cannon sounded, and Hamlet realized that Claudius was at his drinking games. "We'll teach you for to drink ere you depart," he said, gesturing toward the noise.
"My lord, I came to see your father's funeral," Horatio began, referring to his earlier visit as preparation for his account of the ghost's appearance.
Hamlet interrupted him. "I prithee do not mock me, fellow student, I think it was to see my mother's wedding." He hoped to shock Horatio into revealing his true allegiance.
Horatio, who had been briefed by Marcellus on Hamlet's anger at his mother's remarriage, said, "Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon."
Hamlet gave him a keen look. "Thrift," he said, "thrift, Horatio: The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." He gave a grim smile at the bitter joke, but then bowed his head: "Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven or ever I had seen that day, Horatio." He lifted his head and gazed off into the distance. "My father, methinks I see my father," he said, sorrowfully.
Surprised, Horatio followed Hamlet's gaze and blurted out, "Where, my lord?" half expecting to see the ghost materialize in the hall.
Hamlet looked at him, puzzled. "In my mind's eye, Horatio," he said.
"I saw him once -- 'a was a goodly king," Horatio said.
"'A was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
"My lord, I think I saw him yesternight," Horatio said, urgency in his voice.
"Saw, who?"
"My lord, the King your father."
"The King my father?" Had Horatio gone mad?
Horatio pulled himself together. "Season your admiration for a while with an attent ear till I may deliver upon the witness of these gentlemen," he indicated his companions, "this marvel to you."
"For God's love let me hear!"
"Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Barnardo, on their watch in the dead waste and middle of the night been thus encountered: A figure like your father armed at point, exactly cap-à-pie appears before them and with solemn march goes slow and stately by them; thrice he walked by their oppressed and fear-surprised eyes within his truncheon's length whilst they, distilled almost to jelly with the act of fear, stand dumb and speak not to him."
Hamlet stood there, holding his breath, as Horatio continued, "This to me in dreadful secrecy impart they did, and I with them the third night kept the watch where, as they had delivered, both in time, form of the thing, each word made true and good, the apparition comes. I knew your father," he assured Hamlet again, "these hands are not more like."
"But where was this?" Hamlet asked, turning to Marcellus for corroboration.
"My lord, upon the platform where we watch."
"Did you not speak to it?"
"My lord, I did," Horatio spoke up, "but answer made it none. Yet once methought it lifted up it head and did address itself to motion like as it would speak. But even then the morning cock crew loud and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight."
This is impossible, Hamlet thought, trying to regain his bearings. "'Tis very strange," was the only thing he could say.
"As I do live, my honoured lord, 'tis true," Horatio insisted, "and we did think it writ down in our duty to let you know if it."
"Indeed, sirs, but this troubles me," he said to them. The ghost of my father, he thought. Or some sort of cruel trick? He had to pursue this. "Hold you the watch tonight?"
"We do, my lord," Horatio replied, indicating himself and Marcellus.
He had to think, to test their story. "Armed, say you?" he asked Marcellus, who replied, "Armed, my lord."
"From top to toe?"
All three men agreed, "My lord, from head to foot."
"Then saw you not his face." Surely it was some courtier playing a malicious joke.
"O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up," Horatio assured him.
"What looked he -- frowningly?"
"A countenance more in sorrow than anger," Horatio said, and Marcellus nodded in agreement.
"Pale, or red?"
"Nay, very pale."
"And fixed his eyes upon you?"
"Most constantly."
This can't have happened, but he was inclined against his better judgment to believe Horatio. If only it had appeared to him. "I would I had been there," he said.
"It would have much amazed you," Horatio said.
"Very like," Hamlet said, his tone slightly mocking the obviousness of Horatio's statement. "Stayed it long?"
Horatio thought for a moment and replied, "While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred."
"Longer," said Marcellus, and Barnardo echoed him, "Longer."
"Not when I saw't," Horatio protested.
"His beard was grizzled, no?" Hamlet asked.
"It was as I have seen it in his life," Horatio answered, "a sable silvered."
The reply seemed to persuade Hamlet to action. "I will watch tonight. Perchance 'twill walk again."
"I warrant it will," Horatio assured him.
"If it assume my noble father's person I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape and bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, if you have hitherto concealed this sight let it be tenable in your silence still and whatsomever else shall hap tonight give it an understanding but no tongue, I will requite your loves. So fare you well, upon the platform 'twixt eleven and twelve I'll visit you."
"Our duty to your honour," Marcellus said, and with a bow the three men took their leave.
My father's spirit -- in arms! he thought. All is not well; I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come. Till then sit still my soul -- foul deeds will rise though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes.
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