you mercy,
How strange or odde so ere I beare my selfe; [Sidenote: How | so mere]
(As I perchance heereafter shall thinke meet [Sidenote: As]
[Sidenote: 136, 156, 178] To put an Anticke disposition on:)[8]
[Sidenote: on]
That you at such time seeing me, neuer shall [Sidenote: times]
With Armes encombred thus, or thus, head shake;
[Sidenote: or this head]

[Footnote 1: He feels his honour touched.]

[Footnote 2: The Ghost's interference heightens Hamlet's agitation. If
he does not talk, laugh, jest, it will overcome him. Also he must not
show that he believes it his father's ghost: that must be kept to
himself--for the present at least. He shows it therefore no
respect--treats the whole thing humorously, so avoiding, or at least
parrying question. It is all he can do to keep the mastery of himself,
dodging horror with half-forced, half-hysterical laughter. Yet is he all
the time intellectually on the alert. See how, instantly active, he
makes use of the voice from beneath to enforce his requisition of
silence. Very speedily too he grows quiet: a glimmer of light as to the
course of action necessary to him has begun to break upon him: it breaks
from his own wild and disjointed behaviour in the attempt to hide the
conflict of his feelings--which suggests to him the idea of shrouding
himself, as did David at the court of the Philistines, in the cloak of
madness: thereby protected from the full force of what suspicion any
absorption of manner or outburst of feeling must occasion, he may win
time to lay his plans. Note how, in the midst of his horror, he is yet
able to think, plan, resolve.]

[Footnote 3: _1st Q. 'The Gost under the stage.'_]

[Footnote 4: While Hamlet seems to take it so coolly, the others have
fled in terror from the spot. He goes to them. Their fear must be what,
on the two occasions after, makes him shift to another place when the
Ghost speaks.]

[Footnote 5: Now at once he consents.]

[Footnote 6: In the _Quarto_ this and the next line are transposed.]

[Footnote 7: What idea is involved as the cause of the Ghost's thus
interfering?--That he too sees what difficulties must encompass the
carrying out of his behest, and what absolute secrecy is thereto
essential.]

[Footnote 8: This idea, hardly yet a resolve, he afterwards carries out
so well, that he deceives not on