Hamlet 1.4-1.5

After Hamlet finishes his interview with the ghost of his father, his friends Horatio and Marcellus show up. At first they want Hamlet to tell them what happened, but Hamlet understands that they already know what happened, so he proceeds to force them to swear oaths by their swords that they will not tell. It is curious how much time and language Hamlet spends trying to get them to swear that they will keep what they have heard to themselves. He treats his friends like children when he charges them not to say “Well, well, we know,” “We could an if we would,” “if we list to speak,” or “There be an if they might.” The level of detail that he tells his friends to follow here is almost comical, but the tone of the moment with the Ghost constantly interjecting from the ether is ominously urgent. The Ghost of King Hamlet hints that he himself is not as blameless as our first impression from the first three scenes may have indicated (1.4.15-26). Although he does not specify what he has done, the Ghost tells the he is “doomed for a certain term to walk the night and for the day confined to fast in fires.” It is possible that King Hamlet wishes to make his charge against King Claudius more credible by the admission of his own faults, but the self-incrimination seems to be more of a gasp indicating the misery he is in and that he desperately needs to confide in someone. Hamlet is very confident that he must deal out revenge in his parting words to his father. It is true that it would be very difficult for him to tell a ghost who is none other than his father that he will not follow his wish to his face. Hamlet’s conviction may soften with time. When the Ghost says “cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,” it seems to indicate that King Hamlet regrets not being able to confess or forgive before he died. The purgatory that this has caused him may actually have led him to need a scapegoat for his misery. The description of how he died, by poisoning, is essentially the same as might be dealt by a snake. The fact that the Ghost forbids Hamlet from touching Queen Gertrude despite her promiscuity in his eyes suggests that he still loves her or else he loves Hamlet too much to make him injure his own mother.