nourishing obscurity

SCENE V. Another part of the platform.

Enter GHOST and HAMLET
HAMLET
Where 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.

HAMLET
What?

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 forbid
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–

HAMLET
O God!

Ghost
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

HAMLET
Murder!

Ghost
Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange and unnatural.

And finally:

Sleep tight!

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