Dad or Devil? o What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,/Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff/ That beetles o’er his base into the sea/ And there assume some other horrible form/ Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason/ And draw you into madness? Think of it/ The very place puts toys of desperation/ Without more motive into every brain/ That looks so many fathoms to the sea/ And hears it roar beneath. (1. 4. 69-78)
 Horatio believes the ghost is a devil and warns Hamlet that it could lead him into trouble
 Character development
 Foreshadows that the ghost will cause Hamlet to go mad
 It was believed that a demon would appear in a recognizable form when a person was in a time of need
Bad Omen o A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye/ In the most high and palmy state of Rome/ A little ere the mightiest Julius fell/ The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead/ Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets/ As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood/ Disasters in the sun; and the moist star/ Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands/ Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse/ And even the like precurse of fear’d events/ As harbingers preceding still the fates/ And prologue to the omen coming on/ Have heaven and earth together demonstrated/ Unto our climatures and countrymen. (1.1. 15-128)
 Allusion to Julius Caesar
 Foreshadows
 Develops tragic mood
 Elizabethan theories; hearing noises before a death occurred
Madness
o Alas, how