With the sudden appearance of the ghost in Gertrude’s bedroom, the passions are cooled and the fast and furious words are halted from their violent course between mother and son. When Hamlet acclimatizes to the new supernatural circumstance of the Ghost’s presence, he becomes practically joyous, as though he were receiving divine confirmation for his course. Hamlet speaks to the ghost as if to an angel:
Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards!
What would your gracious figure?Gertrude, the distraught mother, does not see the ghost, and she must be alarmed to see her troubled and disturbed son suddenly talking to himself like a schizoid. She says, as if to herself:
Alas, he's mad!Hamlet is oblivious to his mother’s discomfiture and continues to speak to his risen father:
Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command? O, say!The ghost, the elder Hamlet, is not unmindful of his erstwhile wife’s distress, and he speaks to his son:
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits:
O, step between her and her fighting soul:
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works:
Speak to her, Hamlet.And the prince is in for a rude surprise.
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