The appearance of the ghost in the opening Act and scene tells the audience that the ghost is going to play a large part in the progression of the plot.
Hamlet’s first sighting of the ghost is in Scene 1, Act 4. His first emotion, like that of Horatio, in seeing the ghost is of terror and shock and he wonders if the portentous figure, so like the father he eulogised in his first soliloquy is a ‘spirit of health or a goblin damned’ and whether the ghost had brought pure air from heaven or contagion from hell. Hamlet is unsure if the ghost has intentions that are ‘wicked or charitable’. The long moment of suspense generated by this threefold antithesis is used by Shakespeare to register the idea of the ambiguous status of the Ghost.
Although it rejects Hamlet’s pity, the Ghost first move is to stir it up by describing his purgatorial suffering. In Act 1 Scene 5, the ghost terrifies Hamlet with the prospect of divine wrath but then calls upon Hamlet’s sense of filial duty to commit a deed that will condemn his soul to Hell. The Ghost describes murder as ‘most foul, as in the best it is’ whilst asking Hamlet to commit such a crime. It dwells luridly upon Gertrude’s sexual depravity but then tells Hamlet not to think ill of her. The Ghost’s moral code is a mass of contradictions, which could confuse Hamlet as to what exactly the ghost wants him to do.
During this scene Shakespeare signals to the audience Hamlet’s unfitness for the role of revenge hero by the clever use of a confused simile. In the quote from ‘Hate me to know’t, that I with wings as swift/ As meditation or the thoughts of love/ May sweep to my revenge’ the middle part of the quote is deliberately out of place with the sentiments the situation demands. The Ghost’s response is a cunning mixture of ironic praise and implied criticism: ‘I find thee apt/ And duller shouldst thou be…/ Wouldst thou not stir in this’. ‘Dullness’, and a feeling of failure to live up to what is expected of him, is something that Hamlet castigates himself for a number of times before being sent to England (with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) by Claudius halfway through Act 4.
The Ghost’s narrative of the murder is graphic and gruesome in its horrible details. The most interesting point about the story is that the reader never learns whether it is true or not. Shakespeare paints the cruellest death in minutely disturbing detail to scare and shock the audience of the time.
Claudius confesses in Act 3 that he murdered his brother but does not say how he murdered him. Despite having watched them represented on stage, he is haunted by none of the pictures of the disfigured corpse of the late king the Ghost paints. Shakespeare could be alluring the audience to explore the idea of somebody having poison poured into his ear metaphorically, and to ask whether this is what is happening in Act 1 Scene 5 to Hamlet.
Hamlet is haunted by a figure closely resembling the man he thought of as a father and god. He spends the whole of the play vowing the obey instructions that he refuses to follow. Although he never articulates criticism of his father, Hamlet’s actions speak louder than his words. Only when the ghost is exorcised in Act 5, does the Prince claim the name he inherited from his father as his own.
Act 3, Scene 4 is the first proper conversation between Hamlet and Gertrude since Act 1, Scene 2. In Hamlet’s great anger, Gertrude tries in vain to reprimand her son but the control of the conversation is seized by Hamlet. He deliberately mocks the rhythm and the words of her reprimands, turning the finger of accusation from his own behaviour to his mother’s. A good example of this is when Gertrude says ‘Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended’ with Hamlet replying ‘Mother, you have my father much offended. Gertrude continues with ‘Come, come you answer with an idle tongue’ but once again Hamlet mocks her and says ‘Go, go you question with a wicked tongue.’
Hamlet kills Polonius who was eavesdropping on Hamlet and his mother’s conversation by accident as he thought it was the King. The lack of remorse for his actions shocks Gertrude as she talks of it as a ‘bloody deed’ but Hamlet manages to throw back the phrase at her and retorts in a jeering couplet: ‘A bloody deed? Almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king and marry with his brother’.
When the ghost appears, this time not ‘in complete steel’ but ‘in his habit as he lived’ only Hamlet can see it and Gertrude believes Hamlet is still mad.
For the Elizabethan audience the appearance of the ghost in ‘Hamlet’ would scare and frighten the audience immensely. Unlike today Elizabethan theatregoers would not have access to television and horror films so any representation of the supernatural would be terrifying for them. A historical writer at the time even tells of how an audience ran out of a theatre because they thought the ghost on stage was real! Today with the advances in technology and special effects on television a modern day audience would have a much less response on seeing the ghost in ‘Hamlet’ because they feel comfortable in knowing the ghost is just being played by a human actor.
Bibliography
- York Notes on Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- www.studyworld.com
- www.hamletheaven.com
Word Count
- 1207
