Act 1, Scene 5

A more remote part of the Castle.

[Enter Ghost and Hamlet.]
Hamlet
708 Whither wilt thou lead me? speak! I'll go no further.
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
709 Mark me.
Hamlet
710 I will.
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
711 My hour is almost come,
712 When I to sulph'uous and tormenting flames
713 Must render up myself.
Hamlet
714 Alas, poor ghost!
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
715 Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
716 To what I shall unfold.
Hamlet
717 Speak; I am bound to hear.
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
718 So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.
Hamlet
719 What?
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
720 I am thy father's spirit;
721 Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
722 And for the day confin'd to wastein fires,
723 Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
724 Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
725 To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
726 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
727 Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
728 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres;
729 Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
730 And each particular hair to stand on end
731 Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
732 But this eternal blazon must not be
733 To ears of flesh and blood.—List, list, O, list!—
734 If thou didst ever thy dear father love—
Hamlet
735 O God!
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
736 Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.
Hamlet
737 Murder!
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
738 Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
739 But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
Hamlet
740 Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift
741 As meditation or the thoughts of love,
742 May sweep to my revenge.
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
743 I find thee apt;
744 And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
745 That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
746 Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.
747 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,
748 A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
749 Is by a forged process of my death
750 Rankly abus'd; but know, thou noble youth,
751 The serpent that did sting thy father's life
752 Now wears his crown.
Hamlet
753 O my prophetic soul!
754 Mine uncle!
Ghost of Hamlet's Father
755 Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
756 With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,—
757 O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
758 So to seduce!—won to his shameful lust
759 The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen:
760 O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!
761 From me, whose love was of that dignity
762 That it went hand in hand even with the vow
763 I made to her in marriage; and to decline
764 Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
765 To those of mine!
766 But virtue, as it never will be mov'd,
767 Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;
768 So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,
769 Will sate itself in a celestial bed
770 And prey on garbage.
771 But soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
772 Brief let me be.—Sleeping within my orchard,
773 My custom always of the afternoon,
774 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
775 With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
776 And in the porches of my ears did pour
777 The leperous distilment; whose effect
778 Holds such an enmity with blood of man
779 That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
780 The natural gates and alleys of the body;
781 And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
782 And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
783 The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine;
784 And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
785 Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust
786 All my smooth body.
787 Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand,
788 Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
789 Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
790 Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd;
791 No reckoning made, but sent to my account
792 With all my imperfections on my head:
793 O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
794 If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
795 Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
796 A couch for luxury and damned incest.
797 But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act,
798 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
799 Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven,
800 And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
801 To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
802 The glowworm shows the matin to be near,
803 And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
804 Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.
[Exit.]
Hamlet
805 O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
806 And shall I couple hell? O, fie!—Hold, my heart;
807 And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
808 But bear me stiffly up.—Remember thee!
809 Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
810 In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
811 Yea, from the table of my memory
812 I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
813 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
814 That youth and observation copied there;
815 And thy commandment all alone shall live
816 Within the book and volume of my brain,
817 Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!—
818 O most pernicious woman!
819 O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
820 My tables,—meet it is I set it down,
821 That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
822 At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark:
[Writing.]
Hamlet
823 So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
824 It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me:'
825 I have sworn't.
[Within.]
Horatio
826 My lord, my lord,—
[Within.]
Marcellus
827 Lord Hamlet,—
[Within.]
Horatio
828 Heaven secure him!
Hamlet
829 So be it!
[Within.]
Marcellus
830 Illo, ho, ho, my lord!
Hamlet
831 Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.
[Enter Horatio and Marcellus.]
Marcellus
832 How is't, my noble lord?
Horatio
833 What news, my lord?
Hamlet
834 O, wonderful!
Horatio
835 Good my lord, tell it.
Hamlet
836 No; you'll reveal it.
Horatio
837 Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Marcellus
838 Nor I, my lord.
Hamlet
839 How say you then; would heart of man once think it?—
840 But you'll be secret?
Hor. and Mar
841 Ay, by heaven, my lord.
Hamlet
842 There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
843 But he's an arrant knave.
Horatio
844 There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
845 To tell us this.
Hamlet
846 Why, right; you are i' the right;
847 And so, without more circumstance at all,
848 I hold it fit that we shake hands and part:
849 You, as your business and desires shall point you,—
850 For every man hath business and desire,
851 Such as it is;—and for my own poor part,
852 Look you, I'll go pray.
Horatio
853 These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.
Hamlet
854 I'm sorry they offend you, heartily;
855 Yes, faith, heartily.
Horatio
856 There's no offence, my lord.
Hamlet
857 Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,
858 And much offence too. Touching this vision here,—
859 It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you:
860 For your desire to know what is between us,
861 O'ermaster't as you may. And now, good friends,
862 As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,
863 Give me one poor request.
Horatio
864 What is't, my lord? we will.
Hamlet
865 Never make known what you have seen to-night.
Hor. and Mar
866 My lord, we will not.
Hamlet
867 Nay, but swear't.
Horatio
868 In faith,
869 My lord, not I.
Marcellus
870 Nor I, my lord, in faith.
Hamlet
871 Upon my sword.
Marcellus
872 We have sworn, my lord, already.
Hamlet
873 Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.
[Beneath.]
Hamlet
874 Ha, ha boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny?—
875 Come on!—you hear this fellow in the cellarage,—
876 Consent to swear.
Horatio
877 Propose the oath, my lord.
Hamlet
878 Never to speak of this that you have seen,
879 Swear by my sword.
[Beneath.]
Hamlet
880 Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground.—
881 Come hither, gentlemen,
882 And lay your hands again upon my sword:
883 Never to speak of this that you have heard,
884 Swear by my sword.
[Beneath.]
Hamlet
885 Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
886 A worthy pioner!—Once more remove, good friends.
Horatio
887 O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet
888 And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
889 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
890 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
891 But come;—
892 Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
893 How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,—
894 As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
895 To put an antic disposition on,—
896 That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
897 With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake,
898 Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
899 As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';—
900 Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';—
901 Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
902 That you know aught of me:—this is not to do,
903 So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
904 Swear.
[Beneath.]
Hamlet
905 Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!—So, gentlemen,
906 With all my love I do commend me to you:
907 And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
908 May do, to express his love and friending to you,
909 God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
910 And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
911 The time is out of joint:—O cursed spite,
912 That ever I was born to set it right!—
913 Nay, come, let's go together.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 722historical topical
“confin'd to wastein fires”
The Ghost describes a place of cleansing punishment between death and Heaven — the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, where souls atone for sins 'not yet burnt and purged away.' In 1563, the Church of England officially rejected Purgatory (Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles), making this Ghost's claim theologically explosive to Shakespeare's Protestant audience: is the spirit a true soul from a real Catholic afterlife, or a devil sent to damn Hamlet? The scene's horror depends on this ambiguity.
historical Purgatory
TLN 723cultural context
“foul crimes done in my days of nature”
'Days of nature' means his natural lifetime — the Ghost did not die in a state of grace, having had no time for last rites (see TLN 789). 'Crimes' here carries the older meaning of sins or moral offences, not necessarily criminal acts. The Ghost's purgatorial sentence is not for the manner of his death but for the unconfessed sins he accumulated during life.
TLN 745classical allusion
“Lethe wharf”
In Greek myth, Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in the underworld; souls who drank from it forgot their earthly lives before reincarnation. A 'wharf' is its bank or shore. The Ghost tells Hamlet he would be duller than a weed rotting on the shore of oblivion — i.e., an utterly inert, memory-less creature — if he did nothing. The allusion connects classical and Christian underworlds, fitting the Ghost's mixed theology.
classical Lethe, river of forgetfulness
TLN 748biblical allusion
“A serpent stung me”
The serpent in an orchard who causes death and usurps an innocent man's place calls up Genesis 3: Satan as the serpent in the Garden of Eden who deceives, corrupts, and dispossesses. Claudius is the satanic intruder; King Hamlet in his orchard is an Adam-figure dispossessed of his paradise. Shakespeare develops the parallel deliberately — the word 'orchard' (v. 746 and 771) frames the murder scene in Edenic terms.
biblical The serpent in the Garden of Eden
TLN 753cultural context
“O my prophetic soul!”
Hamlet's exclamation reveals that he already suspected Claudius of murder, even before the Ghost confirmed it. 'Prophetic' also carries the Elizabethan sense of the soul's innate capacity for foreknowledge or intuition — a Neoplatonic idea that the soul, being partly divine, can perceive hidden truths. The line is a pivot: the audience sees that Hamlet's anxiety in Act 1 was not mere grief but suppressed suspicion.
TLN 755archaic vocab
“that incestuous, that adulterate beast”
'Adulterate' here means adulterous — guilty of adultery — not 'corrupted' in the modern chemical sense. 'Incestuous' refers to canon law: marriage to a brother's widow was forbidden as a form of incest in both Catholic canon law and the Church of England's Table of Kindred and Affinity. Claudius is doubly condemned: he committed adultery before the murder, and then compounded it with an unlawful marriage.
TLN 784archaic vocab
“tetter bark'd about”
'Tetter' is an archaic medical term for any skin eruption or scabbing disease (eczema, ringworm, herpes). 'Bark'd about' means covered with a bark-like crust — the skin hardened like tree bark. The following line calls it 'lazar-like': resembling the sores of a leper (from Lazarus, the leprous beggar of Luke 16). The description gives an audience accustomed to plague and skin disease a visceral horror at how the king's healthy body was transformed by poison.
TLN 790cultural context
“Unhous'led, disappointed, unanel'd”
Three words for the denial of Catholic last rites. 'Unhouseled' = without the Eucharist (the 'housel,' or consecrated host); 'disappointed' = spiritually unprepared, without confession or absolution; 'unanealed' = without extreme unction, the anointing given to the dying. The old king died with none of them — which is why his Ghost suffers in Purgatory.
TLN 796archaic vocab
“luxury and damned incest”
'Luxury' in Elizabethan English does not mean expensive comfort; it means lust, lechery, or unbridled sexual appetite. The Ghost condemns Claudius's sexual possession of Gertrude, not his taste for fine living. This meaning was standard through the seventeenth century and survives in the adjective 'luxurious' used elsewhere by Shakespeare.
TLN 810wordplay
“this distracted globe”
'Globe' puns on two meanings simultaneously: Hamlet's head (his skull as the 'globe' of his mind, now reeling from what he has heard) and the Globe Theatre, where the play was performed from 1599. The pun lets Shakespeare step briefly outside the fiction — Hamlet's 'distracted globe' is also the theatre full of distracted spectators. 'Distracted' means in turmoil or disordered (not merely inattentive).
TLN 811cultural context
“table of my memory”
'Table' means a writing tablet — either a wax tablet or a small notebook of erasable paper (a 'table-book') that Elizabethans commonly carried to jot down observations, maxims, and commonplaces. Hamlet's metaphor presents his mind as such a tablet, which he is now wiping clean to inscribe the Ghost's commandment alone. The metaphor is made concrete when he actually pulls out his physical 'tables' (notebook) three lines later at TLN 819.
TLN 857historical topical
“by Saint Patrick”
St. Patrick was keeper of Purgatory in medieval legend, and Station Island in Lough Derg (Ireland) was believed to be an entrance to it. By swearing 'by Saint Patrick,' Hamlet covertly signals to Horatio that what he has witnessed concerns Purgatory — the realm the Ghost came from. The oath is a cryptic hint, not random Catholic color.
historical Saint Patrick and Purgatory
TLN 871cultural context
“Upon my sword”
A sword held upright presents the hilt as a cross. Swearing 'upon my sword' is therefore swearing on a cross — a solemn Christian oath, not merely a theatrical gesture. Hamlet demands an oath that binds Horatio and Marcellus as firmly as a religious vow, invoking both the martial code of honor and the Christian sacredness of the cross. The Ghost's underground voice calling 'Swear' reinforces the supernatural sanction.
TLN 886archaic vocab
“A worthy pioner!”
A 'pioner' (also 'pioneer') was a military laborer who dug trenches, laid mines, and cleared ground for the infantry — the lowest rank in the Elizabethan army hierarchy. Hamlet affectionately mocks the Ghost as a champion burrower, comparing its underground movements to a combat engineer digging a mine beneath enemy fortifications. The image deflates the horror slightly and shows Hamlet's coping through black humor.
TLN 889rhetorical device
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,”
Hamlet turns Horatio's rationalism against him with a philosophical rebuttal: the world contains more than natural philosophy (i.e., Renaissance science and Aristotelian reason) can account for. 'Your philosophy' is a pointed possessive — Horatio the scholar, not Hamlet, represents that worldview. The line is one of Shakespeare's most quoted because it articulates a tension between empirical skepticism and the evidence of supernatural experience that the entire play dramatizes.
TLN 895archaic vocab
“To put an antic disposition on”
'Antic' means grotesque, wildly foolish, or mad — specifically recalling the contorted figures ('antics') carved on medieval and Renaissance decorations, as well as the 'antick' or zany clown of stage tradition. An 'antic disposition' is a performance of madness, not genuine insanity. This is Hamlet's announcement of his strategic plan: he will act the fool or lunatic as protective cover, letting him probe Claudius without tipping his hand. Whether the madness eventually becomes real is a question the play never resolves.
TLN 911rhetorical device
“The time is out of joint”
'Out of joint' is a medical metaphor: a dislocated bone displaced from its socket, causing pain and dysfunction until it is reset. The 'time' (the age, the political moment, the state of Denmark) is structurally broken — and Hamlet has just been told he is the one born to reset it. The line is both a closing observation on the whole preceding scene and the keynote of the play's central conflict: disorder can only be cured by violent action, which Hamlet cannot easily bring himself to take.