Ham. Why look you there: looke how it steals away: [Sidenote: 173] My Father in his habite, as he liued, Looke where he goes euen now out at the Portall. Exit. [Sidenote: Exit Ghost.]
[Sidenote: 114] Qu. This is the very coynage of your Braine,
[Sidenote: Ger.]
[Footnote 1: The Ghost here judges, as alone is possible to him, from what he knows—from the fact that his brother Claudius has not yet made his appearance in the ghost-world. Not understanding Hamlet's difficulties, he mistakes Hamlet himself.]
[Footnote 2: He mistakes also, through his tenderness, the condition of his wife—imagining, it would seem, that she feels his presence, though she cannot see him, or recognize the source of the influence which he supposes to be moving her conscience: she is only perturbed by Hamlet's behaviour.]
[Footnote 3: —fighting within itself, as the sea in a storm may be said to fight.
He is careful as ever over the wife he had loved and loves still; careful no less of the behaviour of the son to his mother.
In the 1st Q. we have:—
But I perceiue by thy distracted lookes,
Thy mother's fearefull, and she stands amazde:
Speake to her Hamlet, for her sex is weake,
Comfort thy mother, Hamlet, thinke on me.]
[Footnote 4: —not used here for bare imagination, but imagination with its concomitant feeling:—conception. 198.]
[Footnote 5: His last word ere he vanishes utterly, concerns his queen; he is tender and gracious still to her who sent him to hell. This attitude of the Ghost towards his faithless wife, is one of the profoundest things in the play. All the time she is not thinking of him any more than seeing him—for 'is he not dead!'—is looking straight at where he stands, but is all unaware of him.]