nd the ghost beckoned to Hamlet, that he should go with him
to some more removed place, where they might be alone; and Horatio and
Marcellus would have dissuaded the young prince from following it, for
they feared lest it should be some evil spirit, who would tempt him to
the the neighbouring sea, or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and
there put on some horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his
reason. But their counsels and entreaties could not alter Hamlet's
determination, who cared too little about life to fear the losing of
it; and as to his soul, he said, what could the spirit do to that, being
a thing immortal as itself? And he felt as hardy as a lion, and bursting
from them, who did all they could to hold him, he followed whithersoever
the spirit led him.

And when they were alone together, the spirit broke silence, and told
him that he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had been cruelly
murdered, and he told the manner of it; that it was done by his own
brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, as Hamlet had already but too much
suspected, for the hope of succeeding to his bed and crown. That as he
was sleeping in his garden, his custom always in the afternoon, his
treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep, and poured the juice of
poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to the life
of man, that swift as quicksilver it courses through all the veins of
the body, baking up the blood, and spreading a crustlike leprosy all
over the skin: thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he was cut off at once
from his crown, his queen, and his life: and he adjured Hamlet, if he
did ever his dear father love, that he would revenge his foul murder.
And the ghost lamented to his son, that his mother should so fall off
from virtue, as to prove false to the wedded love of her first husband,
and to marry his murderer; but he cautioned Hamlet, howsoever he
proceeded in his revenge against his wicked uncle, by no means to act
any violence against the person of his mother, but to leave her to
heaven, and to the stings and thorns of conscience. And Hamlet promised
to observe the ghost's direction in all things, and the ghost vanished.

And when Hamlet was left alone, he took up a solemn resolution, that all
he had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or
observation, should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in
his brain but the memory of what the ghost had told him, and enjoi