In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do or contrive to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep black, as mourning for the king his father’s death, which mode of dress he never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother upon the day she was married, nor could he be brought to join in any of the festivities or rejoicings at that (as it appeared to him) disgraceful day.
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 his 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 rumor 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 armor, from head to foot, which the dead king was known to have worn: and they who saw it (Hamlet’s bosom friend 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 color a sable silvered, as they had seen it in his life-time; 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 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 broken off by Horatio announcing that the ghost was coming.