Look you, I'll go pray.

Horatio calls this 'wild and whirling words.' The Prince who at this
moment, no doubt, expresses his own true inclination, says:--'I am
sorry they offend you--heartily; yes, 'faith, heartily.' It is difficult
for him to justify his own procedure. He feels unable to explain
his thoughts and sentiments to the clear, unwarped reason of a Horatio,
to whom the Ghost did not reply, and to whom no ghost would.

Hamlet assures his friend, for whose sympathy he greatly cares, that
the apparition is a true one, an honest ghost. He advises Horatio to
give the 'wondrous strange' a welcome even as to 'a stranger;' and,
lest he might endeavour to test the apparition by human reason, he speaks
the beautiful words:--

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Hamlet tells his friends that in future he will put on 'an antic
disposition.' Towards them he has, in fact, already done so. His desire
for a threefold oath; his repeated shifting of ground; his swearing
by the sword on which the hands are laid (a custom referable to the
time of the Crusades, and considered tantamount to swearing by the
cross, but which, at the same time, is an older Germanic, and hence
Danish, custom); his use of a Latin formula, _Hic et ubique_--all
these procedures have the evident object of throwing his comrades into
a mystic frame of mind, and to make them keep silence ('so help you
mercy!') as to what they have seen. These are the mysterious means
which those have to use that would make themselves the medium of a
message supernaturally revealed. [5]