his voice was so heart-brokenly expressive of commiseration that the hearers almost anticipated the response,—
“Pity me not: but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.”
The harrowing tale finished, the task of revenge enjoined, the ghost disappears, saying,—
“Adieu! adieu! Hamlet, remember me.”
Nothing in dramatic art has ever been conceived more overwhelmingly affecting and appalling than this scene and speech. A withering spell seemed to have fallen on Hamlet and instantly aged him. He looked as pale and shrivelled as the frozen moonlight and the wintry landscape around him. He spoke the soliloquy that followed with a feeble and slow laboriousness expressive of terrible pain and anxiety:
“Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up! Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat