Explore Shakespeare’s presentation of the Ghost in Hamlet. You must relate
your discussion to relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical
reading.
Old Hamlet’s Ghost is arguably the most famous of Shakespeare’s five ghostly
inventions. Despite only three appearances in what is Shakespeare’s longest
play, the Ghost has an omnipresence that is felt throughout as his role
generates the key questions that drive the plot forward and has puzzled
audiences and academics through the generations. In this essay I will explore
how the Ghost’s presentation is integral to the two most prominent themes in
Hamlet: corruption, and appearance versus reality.
Shakespeare’s characterisation of the Ghost as a mysterious and other-worldly
being introduces the key theme of appearance versus reality into the play.
From Hamlet’s own “craft(ed)” madness to Claudius’ various plots and
schemes, things within Elsinore castle are hardly ever as they seem. Upon the
appearance of the Ghost in 1.1, Horatio charges it with the question “What art
thou?”, at an attempt to understand it, to try “accommodate it into his ideas of
reality” as Catherine Belsey puts it. But just as the Ghost evades this question,
he continues to evade classification of any sort throughout the play, as
Shakespeare makes dramatic use of the uncertainties and earnest debates that
surrounded the nature of apparitions at the time. The Ghost’s very existence
demonstrates, as Hamlet preaches to Horatio, that “There are more things in
heaven and earth…Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”; Shakespeare is
hinting at the theological debates and volatile religious reforms of the 1600s
that had converted England from a Catholic to a Protestant state, under
Elizabeth I. Protestants did not believe in purgatory, meaning most of the
audience would have believed that the Ghost was a devil trying to mislead
Hamlet – Hamlet himself questions this: “The spirit I have seen/May be a
devil”. Hamlet further grapples with the meanings of this apparition: he is not
the blind, ever-loyal son that Victorian critics expect him to be, in regard to
obeying his father from even beyond the grave; instead, he is a modern,
Renaissance student with strong values of idealism before the prevalence of
what Mushat Fyre terms Elsinore’s “ambience of sordidness” forces him into a
darker, more primitive world. This inevitably brings in to question the true
intentions of the Ghost: is he simply using and manipulating Hamlet’s
emotional vulnerability to gain his own revenge? Belsey writes “Ghosts shake
the norms that allow us to understand what exists – and by extension, what
we ourselves are”. The Ghost is part of the deceitful on-goings at Elsinore;
your discussion to relevant contextual factors and ideas from your critical
reading.
Old Hamlet’s Ghost is arguably the most famous of Shakespeare’s five ghostly
inventions. Despite only three appearances in what is Shakespeare’s longest
play, the Ghost has an omnipresence that is felt throughout as his role
generates the key questions that drive the plot forward and has puzzled
audiences and academics through the generations. In this essay I will explore
how the Ghost’s presentation is integral to the two most prominent themes in
Hamlet: corruption, and appearance versus reality.
Shakespeare’s characterisation of the Ghost as a mysterious and other-worldly
being introduces the key theme of appearance versus reality into the play.
From Hamlet’s own “craft(ed)” madness to Claudius’ various plots and
schemes, things within Elsinore castle are hardly ever as they seem. Upon the
appearance of the Ghost in 1.1, Horatio charges it with the question “What art
thou?”, at an attempt to understand it, to try “accommodate it into his ideas of
reality” as Catherine Belsey puts it. But just as the Ghost evades this question,
he continues to evade classification of any sort throughout the play, as
Shakespeare makes dramatic use of the uncertainties and earnest debates that
surrounded the nature of apparitions at the time. The Ghost’s very existence
demonstrates, as Hamlet preaches to Horatio, that “There are more things in
heaven and earth…Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”; Shakespeare is
hinting at the theological debates and volatile religious reforms of the 1600s
that had converted England from a Catholic to a Protestant state, under
Elizabeth I. Protestants did not believe in purgatory, meaning most of the
audience would have believed that the Ghost was a devil trying to mislead
Hamlet – Hamlet himself questions this: “The spirit I have seen/May be a
devil”. Hamlet further grapples with the meanings of this apparition: he is not
the blind, ever-loyal son that Victorian critics expect him to be, in regard to
obeying his father from even beyond the grave; instead, he is a modern,
Renaissance student with strong values of idealism before the prevalence of
what Mushat Fyre terms Elsinore’s “ambience of sordidness” forces him into a
darker, more primitive world. This inevitably brings in to question the true
intentions of the Ghost: is he simply using and manipulating Hamlet’s
emotional vulnerability to gain his own revenge? Belsey writes “Ghosts shake
the norms that allow us to understand what exists – and by extension, what
we ourselves are”. The Ghost is part of the deceitful on-goings at Elsinore;
