Hamlet

Act 1, Sc. 4, lines 41-59: Explain how his behavior here adds to the play's developing impression of Hamlet.

Horatio: Look, my lord, it comes.

Hamlet: Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee "Hamlet," "King," "Father," "Royal Dane." O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why they canonized bones, hearsèd in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher, Wherein we saw thee quietly interred, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, Revisits 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? Wherefore? What should we do?

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Hamlet is a thinking man. He is open to ideas of the metaphysical. Much of his point of view is rooted in Judeo Christian belief. Hamlet muses about the nature of life and death: he questions what happens in the afterlife. The appearance of the ghost captivates him. Hamlet's wonder and fear is also full of excitement, which can be contagious to the audience.