Now the two friends of Hamlet possess nerves which have been hitherto tuned only by the vibrations of the sunshine or of the moon's unhaunted silver. Even if they had known of the murder, their interest in it would not have been personal enough to lend fortitude to help them tolerate this unseen visitor, the murdered man himself! What an encounter! Whose wits of earthly stoutness can sustain it? They feel, and so do we, that the awe is accumulating into a wave that may o'ertopple every sense.
Here mark how superior Shakspeare would have us estimate Hamlet to be, with a capacity of self-possession and a readiness to recur to it. He perceives their friendship to be sorely tried, and on the point of crumbling; and as men muster to repair a dyke, so his resource is prompt, drawn from a soul that can make even a ghost companionable, and no match at all for any bantering mood of his. Tush, my friends! it is no ghost at all: 'tis a "fellow in the cellarage." There's a human phrase for which this wild weather provides a rift; it touches the awe with a strange smile that relieves the men to complete their pact before all the blood of friendship curdles. And we who listen are also kept within our human kind.
"You hear this fellow in the cellarage?" What a sentence to puncture the abyss of the supernatural!
Then Hamlet shifts his standing-place for the sake of his friends; but the unavenged murder is underneath there awaiting them. So the Prince lightly rallies it for its knack of burrowing: he nicknames it an old mole, and the fancy is pleasant; for it occurs to him that he must work under ground for the future; so he calls the mole "a worthy pioneer." "Once more remove, good friends." Then, as he instructs them with minute precautions against ever seeming too wise about the subterranean disposition he may choose to follow, the awful revenge cries up again to them. But their nerves, by this time wonted to the strangeness, no longer need the relief of his ironical braving; so Hamlet dismisses that vein, and lets a murdered father claim the scene to close it with its proper color subdued to the solemn reassurance, "Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!" Then our own spirits venture forth into calmness and hush of the breaking day.