Good Horatio
does his best to restrain his friend, who has waxed 'desperate with
imagination,' from approaching the 'removed ground,' that might deprive
him of the 'sovereignity of reason,' and whither the Ghost beckons him.
Here there are several new lines:--
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff....
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.
Here we have one of those incipient ecstasies of which Montaigne says
that 'such transcending humours affright me as much as _steep,
high, and inaccessible places_.' [4]
In the following scene between Hamlet and the Ghost the introduction is
new:--
_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 shall hear.
This picturing of the torments of hell--how very characteristic! It
is forbidden to the Ghost to communicate to 'ears of flesh and blood'
the secrets of its fiery prison-house. Yet it knows how to tell enough
of the horrors of that gruesome place to make the hair of a stronger
mortal than Hamlet is, stand on end, 'like quills upon the fretful
porcupine.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74