The ghost's charge

The ghost speaks. "I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away." It cannot describe what it suffers; the description would harrow up Hamlet's soul. Instead it gets to the news. The story given out at court — that the king was bitten by a snake while sleeping in the orchard — is false. "The serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown."

The ghost describes the murder. While the king slept in his orchard, his brother Claudius poured a "leprous distilment" of "cursed hebenon" into his ear; the poison curdled the blood "swift as quicksilver" and crusted the skin instantly with vile and loathsome bark. He died unanointed, unconfessed, sent to the next world with all his sins on him. The ghost commands Hamlet to revenge the murder — but to leave Gertrude alone. Whatever her complicity, she is to be left to "her own conscience" and to the punishments of heaven. Dawn is coming; the ghost must go. "Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me."

Hamlet is alone. He swears, with the most theatrical concentration the play permits him, that the ghost's command will live in his memory and nothing else. Horatio and Marcellus catch up. He will not tell them what the ghost said. He swears them, on his sword, to secrecy — and to allow him, in the months ahead, to "put an antic disposition on" should it suit him to. The ghost's voice rises from beneath the stage three times, echoing the oath: "Swear." Hamlet ends the act with the line that announces the play's whole problem: "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!"