All his suffering came from his own fault;
but from the suffering has sprung another crop, not of evil but of good;
the seeds of which had lain unfruitful in the soil, but were brought
within the blessed influences of the air of heaven by the sharp tortures
of the ploughshare of ill.
THE ELDER HAMLET. [Footnote: 1875]
'Tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
The ghost in "Hamlet" is as faithfully treated as any character in the
play. Next to Hamlet himself, he is to me the most interesting person of
the drama. The rumour of his appearance is wrapped in the larger rumour
of war. Loud preparations for uncertain attack fill the ears of "the
subject of the land." The state is troubled. The new king has hardly
compassed his election before his marriage with his brother's widow
swathes the court in the dust-cloud of shame, which the merriment of its
forced revelry can do little to dispel. A feeling is in the moral air to
which the words of Francisco, the only words of significance he utters,
give the key: "'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart." Into the
frosty air, the pallid moonlight, the drunken shouts of Claudius and his
court, the bellowing of the cannon from the rampart for the enlargement
of the insane clamour that it may beat the drum of its own disgrace at
the portals of heaven, glides the silent prisoner of hell, no longer a
king of the day walking about his halls, "the observed of all
observers," but a thrall of the night, wandering between the bell and
the cock, like a jailer on each side of him.
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