Hamlet Quote Analysis

Horatio explains why the Ghost fled at dawn, describing the rooster's crow as a herald that wakes the sun and signals the return of day.

The extended personification turns the cock into a royal trumpeter ('trumpet to the morn') and the sun into a god being wakened, elevating a barnyard sound into a cosmic announcement. The formal, ceremonial diction ('lofty,' 'god of day') contrasts sharply with the simple fact of a rooster crowing, and this gap between high language and humble subject creates a sense of order being restored—daytime belongs to clear hierarchies, while night allowed the Ghost's disorder.

Support a thesis that Shakespeare uses elevated language for natural phenomena to show that daylight restores hierarchy and order—the cock becomes a 'trumpet,' the sun a 'god,' as if dawn itself banishes the night's social and supernatural confusion.