Enter Ghost.
Hor. Look, my lord, it comes!
Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!—
Be thou a spirit of health[b 1] or goblin damn'd, 40
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents[a 1] wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable[b 2] shape
That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father; Royal Dane, O,[a 2][b 3] answer me! 45
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canoniz'd[b 4] bones, hearsed in death,
- ↑ 40. spirit of health] Clar. Press explains: "a healed or saved spirit."
- ↑ 43. questionable] inviting question, In As You Like It, III. ii. 393, "unquestionable," averse to conversation, occurs.
- ↑ 45. father; Royal Dane, O,] The pointing leads to "father" as the completion of the climax. This reading is adopted by Furness.
- ↑ 47. canonis'd] The accent, as always in Shakespeare, is on the second syllable.
MS. may have had evile, devile. It is possible, as Keightley suggests, that the sentence is interrupted before its completion by the Ghost's entrance. Most commentators regard it as complete, and attempt to emend "of a doubt." About eighty proposals are recorded in the Cambridge Shakespeare. Perhaps "often dout," meaning do out, efface, is the best of these, "Oft devote" (consign to evil) seems not to have been proposed. I would suggest what I suppose to be a new line of consideration. "Scandal" is commonly regarded as a noun; although "doth" is separated from "scandal" by one of those suspensions, by qualifying clauses, characteristic of this speech, may not "doth scandal" be the verb? We have in Cymbeline, III. iv. 62: "Sinon's weeping did scandal many a holy tear." Here "the dram of evil doth scandal all the noble substance." The idea is that required; the language is Shakespearean. To in Shakespeare often means as far as; if we met "I am scandal'd to ignominy," we should understand it, like "sick to doomsday" (I. i. 120). The dram of evil scandals all the noble substance to its own (substance); "his" being here used for the modern "its." "Of" is frequent in the sense of out of, by virtue of, e,g. Lovers Labour's Lost, II. 28: "bold of your worthiness," and we still say "of your charity." Out of a mere doubt or suspicion the dram of evil degrades in reputation all the noble substance to its own. "Scandal" may have been meant to precede "to his own."
