y.

What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the manner of his
father's death. It was given out by Claudius that a serpent had stung
him; but young Hamlet had shrewd suspicions that Claudius himself was
the serpent; in plain English, that he had murdered him for his crown,
and that the serpent who stung his father did now sit on the throne.

How far he was right in this conjecture, and what he ought to think of
his mother, how far she was privy to this murder, and whether by her
consent or knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts
which continually harassed and distracted him.

A rumour had reached the ear of young Hamlet, that an apparition,
exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the
soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight, for
two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly clad in
the same suit of armour, from head to foot, which the dead king was
known to have worn: and they who saw it (Hamlet's bosom friend Horatio
was one) agreed in their testimony as to the time and manner of its
appearance: that it came just as the clock struck twelve; that it
looked pale, with a face more of sorrow than of anger; that its beard
was grisly, and the colour a sable silvered, as they had seen it in his
lifetime: that it made no answer when they spoke to it; yet once they
thought it lifted up its head, and addressed itself to motion, as if it
were about to speak; but in that moment the morning cock crew, and it
shrunk in haste away, and vanished out of their sight.

The young prince, strangely amazed at their relation, which was too
consistent and agreeing with itself to disbelieve, concluded that it
was his father's ghost which they had seen, and determined to take his
watch with the soldiers that night, that he might have a chance of
seeing it; for he reasoned with himself, that such an appearance did
not come for nothing, but that the ghost had something to impart, and
though it had been silent hitherto, yet it would speak to him. And he
waited with impatience for the coming of night.

When night came he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one of
the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed to
walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and nipping,
Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk about the
coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by Horatio
announcing that