How does a knowledge of the Elizabethan spectator's beliefs about ghosts help your understanding of Hamlet and the task he is set?

Authors Avatar
Jodean Sumner

How does a knowledge of the Elizabethan spectator's beliefs about ghosts help your understanding of Hamlet and the task he is set?

To understand Hamlet in the play we need to understand the context of the story and the beliefs in which Shakespeare's audience would have held on ghosts. These beliefs in which the Elizabethan audience would have are the key to understanding Hamlets predicament in the play and why he acts and behaves in the manner in which he does.

There were three main views on ghosts within the Elizabethan era which were that of the catholic faith, the protestant faith, and the more sceptical view of ghosts. The catholic view of ghosts was that as well as heaven and hell, after death a soul may go to another place called purgatory, to pay for their sins. From here they may return to earth to fulfil a particular purpose. However protestants, though they usually believed in ghosts undoubtedly, held the view that there was no such place as purgatory and that a person could go to either heaven or hell, a "bourn from which no traveller returns" and so if ghosts did appear they may be angels however in the most part they were devils who took the image of departed relatives or friends to tempt the person whom it visits, to cause physical or spiritual harm upon them. The final major view was that in which ghosts only appeared to those who were depressed or sad, "in a word, apparitions are either the illusion of melancholic minds or flat knavery on the part of some rogue" however spirits did exist, they thought, as the bible had said it was so, but they believed that they could not take the form of an living or once-living being and therefore could not be seen.

To entertain these different views in the audience and also to reveal the difficulty Hamlet has in deciding whether to believe the ghost, Shakespeare uses different characters that see the ghost to represent each of these Elizabethan beliefs. To prove to members of the audience who could believe the ghost to be part of Hamlet's imagination due to his current state of melancholy, Shakespeare structured his play so that three characters see the ghost even before Hamlet knows of it. It is they who reveal the ghost to Hamlet. Marcellus and Bernardo are the lesser educated guards who see the ghost first. Their lack of knowledge on theology leaves them to a superstitious belief as they think that Horatio who is educated, is the only one who may speak to it, "thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio," this reveals that they accommodate the old belief that only those can speak Latin the religious language could speak to the ghost. However though there is an element of uneducated suspicion they mainly represent the catholic view,
Join now!


"we do it wrong, being so majestical,

To offer it the show of violence,

For it as the air, invulnerable,"

Marcellus then withholds the catholic belief, not only does he believe it to be the spirit of the "majestical" king but entertains the idea that they could not harm it as it is as the Catholics believed, "a phantasmal" body not real flesh.

Horatio and Hamlet both go to "school in Wittenberg" a university reknowned not only for its studies in theology but also as being a protestant university. So the audience would understand ...

This is a preview of the whole essay