3: More horror yet for Hamlet.]

[Footnote 4: He would have him think of life and its doings as of awful
import. He gives his son what warning he may.]

[Footnote 5: _An end_ is like _agape, an hungred_. 71, 175.]

[Footnote 6: The word in the Q. suggests _fretfull_ a misprint for
_frightful_. It is _fretfull_ in the 1st Q. as well.]

[Footnote 7: To _blason_ is to read off in proper heraldic terms the
arms blasoned upon a shield. _A blason_ is such a reading, but is here
used for a picture in words of other objects.]

[Footnote 8: --in appeal to God whether he had not loved his father.]

[Footnote 9: The horror still accumulates. The knowledge of evil--not
evil in the abstract, but evil alive, and all about him--comes darkening
down upon Hamlet's being. Not only is his father an inhabitant of the
nether fires, but he is there by murder.]

[Page 52]

As meditation, or the thoughts of Loue,
May sweepe to my Reuenge.[1]

_Ghost._ I finde thee apt,
And duller should'st thou be then the fat weede[2]
[Sidenote: 194] That rots it selfe in ease, on Lethe Wharfe,[4]
[Sidenote: rootes[3]]
Would'st thou not stirre in this. Now _Hamlet_ heare:
It's giuen out, that sleeping in mine Orchard, [Sidenote: 'Tis]
A Serpent stung me: so the whole eare of Denmarke,
Is by a forged processe of my death
Rankly abus'd: But know thou Noble youth,
The Serpent that did sting thy Fathers life,
Now weares his Crowne.

[Sidenote: 30,32] _Ham._ O my Propheticke soule: mine Vncle?[5]
[Sidenote: my]

_Ghost._ I that incestuous, that adulterate Beast[6]
With witchcraft of his wits, hath Traitorous guifts.
[Sidenote: wits, with]
Oh wicked Wit, and Gifts, that haue the power
So to seduce? Won to to this shamefull Lust [Sidenote: wonne to his]
The will of my most seeming vertuous Queene:
Oh _Hamlet_, what a falling off was there, [Sidenote: what failing]
From me, whose loue was of that dignity,
That it went hand in hand, euen with[7] the Vow
I made to her in Marriage; and to decline
Vpon a wretch, whose Naturall gifts were poore
To those of mine. But Vertue, as it neuer wil be moued,
Though Lewdnesse court it in a shape of Heauen:
So Lust, though to a radiant Angell link'd, [Sidenote: so but though]
Will sate it selfe in[8] a Celestiall bed, and prey on Garbage