Hamlet

Act 1, Sc. 4, lines 41-59: What is Hamlet's emotional state in these lines?

Horatio: Look, my lord, it comes.

Hamlet: Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee "Hamlet," "King," "Father," "Royal Dane." O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why they canonized bones, hearsèd in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulcher, Wherein we saw thee quietly interred, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean That thou, dead corpse, again in complete steel, Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?

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Hamlet is in awe of the ghost. He is not too scared so much as enraptured by the visit of the ghost. Hamlet is a thinker: he is a philosopher. The ghost's appearance confuses and excites Hamlet: he needs to know what the ghost is and why he is visiting.