As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.

Still am I call'd: unhand me, gentlemen;

By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that let's me: I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee.

(Exeunt GHOST and HAMLET.)

MARCELLUS.

Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

HORATIO.

Heaven will direct it.

MARCELLUS.

Nay, let's follow him.

(Exeunt.)

[A more remote part of the same platform to which the GHOST has led HAMLET.]

HAMLET.

WHITHER wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go

no further.

GHOST.

Mark me.

HAMLET.

I will.

GHOST.

My hour is almost come,

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

HAMLET.

Alas, poor ghost!

GHOST.

Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing

To what I shall unfold.

HAMLET.

Speak; I am bound to hear.
GHOST.

So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

What?

HAMLET.

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 for-

bid

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—

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.

Now, Hamlet, hear:

GHOST.

I find thee apt.

'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.