And liegemen to the Dane.

FRANCISCO

Give you good night.

MARCELLUS

O farewell, honest soldier. Who hath relieved you?

FRANCISCO

Barnardo has my place. Give you good night. Exit

MARCELLUS Holla, Barnardo!

BARNARDO Say—what, is Horatio there?

HORATIO A piece of him.

BARNARDO

Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.

MARCELLUS

What, has this thing appeared again tonight?

BARNARDO 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.

BARNARDO Sit down a while,

And let us once again assail your ears,

That are so fortified against our story,

What we two nights have seen.

HORATIO Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Barnardo speak of this.

BARNARDO Last night of all,

When yon same star that’s westward from the pole

Had made his course t’illume that part of heaven

Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one––

Enter the Ghost in complete armour, holding a truncheon, with his beaver up

MARCELLUS

Peace, break thee off. Look where it comes again.

BARNARDO

In the same figure like the King that’s dead.

MARCELLUS (to Horatio)

Thou art a scholar—speak to it, Horatio.

BARNARDO

Looks it not like the King?—Mark it, Horatio.

HORATIO

Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.

BARNARDO

It would be spoke to.

MARCELLUS Question it, Horatio.

HORATIO (to the Ghost)

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.

BARNARDO See, it stalks away.

HORATIO (to the Ghost)

Stay, speak, speak, I charge thee speak. Exit Ghost

MARCELLUS ’Tis gone, and will not answer.

BARNARDO

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 th‘ambitious Norway combated.

So frowned he once when in an angry parley

He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

’Tis strange.

MARCELLUS

Thus twice before, and just 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 appeared to us,

Was as you know by Fortinbras of Norway,

Thereto pricked on by a most emulate pride,

Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet—

For so this side of our known world esteemed him—

Did slay this Fortinbras, who by a sealed compact

Well ratified by law and heraldry

Did forfeit with his life all those his lands

Which he stood seized on to the conqueror;

Against the which a moiety competent

Was gaged by our King, which had returned

To the inheritance of Fortinbras

Had he been vanquisher, as by the same cov‘nant

And carriage of the article designed

His fell to Hamlet. Now sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there

Sharked up a list of landless resolutes

For food and diet to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in’t, which is no other—

And it doth well appear unto our state—

But to recover of us by strong hand

And terms compulsative 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 rummage in the land.

Enter the Ghost, as before

But soft, behold—lo where it comes again!

I’ll cross it though it blast me.—Stay, illusion.

The Ghost spreads his arms

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.

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—