This scene brings Hamlet face to face with the supernatural for the first time, and his response reveals a character defined by intellectual courage paired with emotional recklessness. Where the soldiers in Scene 1 were paralyzed by fear, Hamlet meets the Ghost with a cascade of questions and a readiness to follow it anywhere — even at the cost of his life, which he values at "a pin's fee."
Hamlet's speech on Denmark's drinking customs may seem like a digression, but it introduces a crucial theme: how a single "vicious mole of nature" — one flaw — can corrupt an entire character, no matter how virtuous otherwise. The "dram of eale" speech (textually corrupt but thematically clear) is Shakespeare's most direct statement of the tragic flaw concept, and it applies ironically to Hamlet himself, whose great intellect will become entangled with a tendency toward delay and overthinking.
Hamlet's address to the Ghost — "Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd" — demonstrates the theological uncertainty that shadows the play. In Protestant theology (which Shakespeare's audience would have known), ghosts were considered demons in disguise; in Catholic tradition, they could be souls from purgatory. Hamlet holds both possibilities open, reflecting his philosophical nature but also introducing a doubt about the Ghost's reliability that will haunt the entire middle of the play.
The physical struggle with Horatio and Marcellus marks a turning point in Hamlet's characterization. His threat — "I'll make a ghost of him that lets me" — shows a capacity for violent decisiveness that stands in stark contrast to his later inability to act against Claudius. The dramatic irony is powerful: Hamlet has no trouble breaking free from his friends, but will spend the rest of the play unable to break free from his own indecision.
Marcellus's closing line — "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" — has become one of literature's most famous political diagnoses. It connects the supernatural disturbance to the political corruption that Claudius represents, suggesting that the ghost and the rottenness share a common cause. The imagery of decay that began in Scene 2's "unweeded garden" deepens here into a national condition.