فصل 4

Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.

HAMLET

The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.

HORATIO

It is a nipping and an eager air.

HAMLET

What hour now?

HORATIO I think it lacks of twelve.

MARCELLUS

No, it is struck.

HORATIO Indeed? I heard it not.

It then draws near the season Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.

A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces go off [within].

What does this mean, my lord?

HAMLET

The King doth wake tonight and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swagg’ring upspring reels; And as he drains his drafts of Rhenish down, The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge.

HORATIO Is it a custom?

HAMLET Ay, marry, is’t, But to my mind, though I am native here And to the manner born, it is a custom More honored in the breach than the observance.

This heavy-headed revel east and west Makes us traduced and taxed of other nations.

They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase Soil our addition; and indeed it takes From our achievements, though performed at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute.

So, oft it chances in particular men, That for some vicious mole of nature in them, As in their birth—wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin— By their o’ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason, Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens The form of plausive manners, that these men, Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, Being nature’s livery or fortune’s star, His virtues else, be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo, Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault. The dram of evil Doth all the noble substance often dout To his own scandal.

Enter Ghost.

HORATIO Look, my lord, it comes!

HAMLET

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com’st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I’ll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane. Oh, answer me!

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsèd in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, Revisits 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?

[The 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 wafts you to a more removèd ground.

But do not go with it.

HORATIO No, by no means.

HAMLET

It will not speak. Then I will follow it.

HORATIO

Do not, my lord!

HAMLET 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.

HORATIO

What if it tempt you toward the flood69, my lord, Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff 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.

HAMLET

It wafts me still.—Go on, I’ll follow thee.

MARCELLUS

You shall not go, my lord.

[They try to stop him.] HAMLET Hold off your hands!

HORATIO

Be ruled. You shall not go.

HAMLET My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

Still am I called. 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.

HORATIO

He waxes desperate with imagination.

MARCELLUS

Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.

HORATIO

Have after. To what issue will this come?

MARCELLUS

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO

Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS Nay, let’s follow him.