Quote Analysis

After the Ghost's first departure, Horatio offers an interpretation of the apparition's meaning, suggesting it signals some coming disaster for Denmark.

The metaphor 'eruption' compares political crisis to a volcano, implying that violence will burst from below rather than arrive from outside. The adjective 'strange' does double work: it means both 'foreign' (external threat) and 'uncanny' (unnatural event), so the line holds both political and supernatural danger in one image. This is the first explicit statement that the Ghost is not just a private haunting but a public omen.

Support a thesis that Horatio interprets the Ghost in political terms—by calling the coming disaster an 'eruption,' he frames Denmark's crisis as internal pressure that has been building unseen, not an external invasion.