Codes
+ + = emendation; <> = First Folio; [ ] = Second Quarto only

+1.4+

                          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         45

               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." O, answer me!           50

          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 interred,

          Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws                 55

          To cast thee up again. What may this mean

          That thou, dead corse, 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                    60

          With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

          Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?


 



1.4.48    questionable: problematic

1.4.52    canonized: i.e., buried in accord with the canons of
                the church (accent on second syllable)

1.4.59-61 and we . . . our souls: and causing us weak humans to
                agitate our minds with thoughts that go beyond

                what even our souls can reach to

Copyright © 1992. The Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved.