Ghost
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed 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. List, list, O list,
If thou didst ever thy dear father love -
Ghost
- Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!
Ghost
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.
Ghost
I find thee apt,
Now Hamlet, hear:
’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.
Hamlet
O my prophetic soul!
My uncle!
Ghost
Ay that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts -
O wicked wit, and gifts that have the power
So to seduce - won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous Queen.
O Hamlet, what a falling off was there.
But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard -
My custom always of the afternoon -
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole
With juice of cursed hebona in a vial
And in the porches of my ears did pour
The leprous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body
And with a sudden vigour it doth possess
And curd - like eager droppings into milk -
The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine
And a most instant tetter barked about
Most lazer-like with vile and loathsome crust
All my smooth body.
Thus was I sleeping by a brother’s hand
Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,
No reckoning made but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.