Question

Read the excerpt from Hamlet, Act I, Scene i. What do Marcellus’s and Horatio’s characterization of the ghost imply? Marcellus: Is it not like the king?

Horatio: As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
’Tis strange.

Marcellus: Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.


Horatio: In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
that a large battle is looming
that someone is tricking them
that the kingdom is cursed
that something bad is going on

Answer 1

Marcellus’s and Horatio’s characterization of the ghost imply that  something bad is going on .

Act 1 Scene 1 takes place outside Elsinore Castle in Denmark in a cold winter night. Bernardo, Marcellus, and Horatio are seen conversing with each other about the unusual thing that they have been witnessing since the last two nights. Bernardo and Marcellus claimed that they have seen the ghost of the dead king and plans to show the ghost to Horatio as well. Horatio is a skeptic in nature and when he also witnesses the ghost he believes that something uncertain will be coming to Denmark. This scene actively participates in providing suspense to the plot of the play “Hamlet.”