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.
HORATIO
What does this mean, my lord?
HAMLET
The King wake tonight and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
HORATIO
Is it a custom?
HAMLET
Ay marry is’t;
And to my mind, though I am native here,
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations:
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform’d at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So 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,
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
all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
HORATIO
Look, my lord, it comes!
HAMLET
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,
Bring with airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be intents wicked or charitable,
com’st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to . I’ll call Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw quietly inurn’d,
op’d his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast up again! What may this mean,
That , dead corse, again in complete steel,
Revisit’st 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? ? What should we do?
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 waves you to a more removed ground.
But do not go with it.
HORATIO
No, by no means.
HAMLET
It will not speak; then will I 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 flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles 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 waves me still.
Go on, I’ll follow .
MARCELLUS
You shall not go, my lord.
HAMLET
Hold off your hands.
HORATIO
Be rul’d; 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.
HAMLET
Still am I call’d. Unhand me, gentlemen.
HAMLET
By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.
I say, away!—Go on, I’ll follow .
HORATIO
He waxes desperate with imagination.
MARCELLUS
Let’s follow; 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.