SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle.

FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO

BERNARDO

Who’s there?

FRANCISCO

Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

BERNARDO

Long live the king!

FRANCISCO

Bernardo?

BERNARDO

He.

FRANCISCO

You come most carefully upon your hour.

BERNARDO

‘Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

FRANCISCO

For this relief much thanks: ’tis bitter cold,
 And I am sick at heart.

BERNARDO

Have you had quiet guard?

FRANCISCO

Not a mouse stirring.

BERNARDO

Well, good night.
 If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
 The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

FRANCISCO

I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who’s there?

Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS

HORATIO

Friends to this ground.

MARCELLUS

And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO

Give you good night.

MARCELLUS

O, farewell, honest soldier:
 Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO

Bernardo has my place.
 Give you good night.

Exit

MARCELLUS

Holla! Bernardo!

BERNARDO

Say,
 What, is Horatio there?

HORATIO

A piece of him.

BERNARDO

Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS

What, has this thing appear’d again to-night?

BERNARDO

I have seen nothing.

MARCELLUS

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!

MARCELLUS

It is offended.

BERNARDO

See, it stalks away!

HORATIO

Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Exit Ghost

MARCELLUS

‘Tis gone, and will not answer.

BERNARDO

How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
 Is not this something more than fantasy?
 What think you on’t?

HORATIO

Before my God, I might not this believe
 Without the sensible and true avouch
 Of mine own eyes.

MARCELLUS

Is it not like the king?

HORATIO

As thou art to thyself:
 Such was the very armour 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.

MARCELLUS

Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
 With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

HORATIO

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.

MARCELLUS

Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
 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-labourer with the day:
 Who is’t that can inform me?

HORATIO

That can I;
 At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,
 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 Hamlet—
 For so this side of our known world esteem’d him—
 Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal’d compact,
 Well ratified by law and heraldry,
 Did 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,
 Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
 And carriage of the article design’d,
 His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
 Of unimproved mettle 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—
 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 this our watch and the chief head
 Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

BERNARDO

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.

HORATIO

A 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,
 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:
 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.—
 But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!

Re-enter Ghost

I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
 If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
 Speak to me:
 If there be any good thing to be done,
 That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
 Speak to me:

Cock crows

If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,
 Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
 Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
 Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
 For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
 Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.

MARCELLUS

Shall I strike at it with my partisan?

HORATIO

Do, if it will not stand.

BERNARDO

‘Tis here!

HORATIO

‘Tis here!

MARCELLUS

‘Tis gone!

Exit Ghost

We do it wrong, being so majestical,
 To offer it the show of violence;
 For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
 And our vain blows malicious mockery.

BERNARDO

It was about to speak, when the cock crew.

HORATIO

And then it started like a guilty thing
 Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
 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.

MARCELLUS

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:
 And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
 The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
 No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
 So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

HORATIO

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
 But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
 Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill:
 Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
 Let us impart what we have seen to-night
 Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,
 This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
 Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
 As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

MARCELLUS

Let’s do’t, I pray; and I this morning know
 Where we shall find him most conveniently.

Exeunt