the ghost was coming.

At the sight of his father's spirit, Hamlet was struck with a sudden
surprise and fear. He at first called upon the angels and heavenly
ministers to defend them, for he knew not whether it were a good spirit
or bad; whether it came for good or evil: but he gradually assumed more
courage; and his father (as it seemed to him) looked upon him so
piteously, and as it were desiring to have conversation with him, and
did in all respects appear so like himself as he was when he lived,
that Hamlet could not help addressing him: he called him by his name,
Hamlet, King, Father! and conjured him that he would tell the reason
why he had left his grave, where they had seen him quietly bestowed, to
come again and visit the earth and the moonlight: and besought him that
he would let them know if there was anything which they could do to
give peace to his spirit. And 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 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 q