Hamlet

Act 1, Sc. 5, lines 1-24: How does the information that the Ghost reveals influence the audience's impression of Hamlet's father?

[Enter Ghost and Hamlet]

Hamlet: Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak. I'll go no further.

Ghost: Mark me.

Hamlet: I will.

Ghost: My hour is almost come When I to sulf'rous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.

Hamlet: Alas, poor ghost!

Ghost: Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold

Hamlet: Speak. I am bound to hear.

Ghost: So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.

Hamlet: What?

Ghost: I am thy father's spirit. Doomed for a certain term to walk the night And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combinèd locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. But this eternal blazon must not be To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

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We get the sense that Hamlet's father was a good king who had his crown, his life, and his wife stolen from him. He might have been naive or too trusting not to see his conniving brother as a threat.