The Ghost delays revealing that he has been murdered, and throughout his speech concentrates on making his son aware of his father’s torments, so that by the end Hamlet would be heartless if he showed no compassion and no desire to fulfil his father’s will. Purgatory is seen as a ‘prison-house’ to punish ‘foul crimes’. In contrast to the rest of the play, and in particular to Claudius’ soliloquy later, there is no direct suggestion of the possibility of grace and forgiveness. The Ghost stresses that he has been ‘Doom’d’ to suffer, and the opening hard consonant followed by the long vowel, as well as the placing of this word on an strong beat instead of the usual weak beat beginning an iambic line, makes ‘Doom’d’ seem like a cry of horror.
The Ghost also stresses the ‘eternal’ nature of his punishment; his sins may eventually be ‘purged away’, but there is no indication of when this might be. As it is, his sufferings are unremitting: he has to ‘walk the night’ and in the day is ‘confined to fast in fires’ — the alliteration here having an almost onomatopoeic effect in recreating the rustle of flames. The assonance on the long vowel sound in ‘burnt’ and ‘purged’ also seems to suggest the length, as well as the painful nature, of his time in purgatory.
Following this first declaration of who he is and where he is ‘confined’, the Ghost stops, and there is a very obvious caesura before the word ‘But’. Although in this context it means ‘except that’, the word normally marks a contrast, and so here it accentuates the change to a slightly different but no less appalling topic: the fact that even to hear of the horrors he is suffering would be fatal to Hamlet.
Ironically, therefore, the very lack of description suggests more than its inclusion could do, and Hamlet’s imagination is left to supply the terrible unspoken images. (The power of ‘words, words, words’, spoken or withheld, is another significant idea throughout the play.)
Although the Ghost has said that he may not tell a word about his punishment, his use of the superlative adjective ‘lightest’ implies the horrors he is withholding, as do the hard sounds in ‘stars start’ and ‘knotted … locks’. In addition, he goes on to use extravagant images. ‘Harrow’ is a dynamic verb suggesting violent overturning (from ploughing) and to Shakespeare’s audience, who would know of Christ’s ‘harrowing of hell’, would inevitably summon up suggestions of hell and of dead souls. ‘Freeze’, with its long vowel sound, and its contrast to the ‘fires’ mentioned earlier, suggests a different kind of physical torment.
Indeed, physical and spiritual worlds are contrasted throughout the speech, perhaps to remind Hamlet (and the audience) of the dual nature of his father and of all humans, who have a corruptible flesh and eternal soul. ‘Spirit’ contrasted with ‘days of nature’, ‘thy soul ... thy young blood’, contrasted in one balanced line, and ‘eternal ... Flesh and blood’ all make the same point.
The final image used by the Ghost before his strong triple command to ‘List’ (a contrast to Hamlet’s earlier to the Ghost to ‘Speak’) is the most extravagant, leading through monosyllables to a climax of polysyllabic words: Hamlet’s hair would stand on end ‘Like quills upon the fretful porpentine’. For Shakespeare’s audience, a porcupine would be a strange and extraordinary creature, usually only seen on heraldic devices — neatly linking with the Ghost’s reference to an ‘eternal blazon’. This memorable image prepares Hamlet (and the audience) to hear of ‘strange’ and indeed ‘unnatural’ events, and the reference to ‘ears of flesh and blood’ is a foreshadowing of what the Ghost is to reveal: the method of his murder.
The Ghost’s reference to his son’s love for his ‘dear father’ is the final reminder of Hamlet’s duty before the command ‘Revenge’. Even now the Ghost has other ways of stressing the importance of filial obligations: three times he declares that his death was not simply murder, but — using the superlative ‘most’ (and contrasting it with ‘best’) — was ‘most foul’. Later in the play, Claudius in soliloquy will use the same description of his crime, when he tries to repent. He knows that his ‘foul murder’ of a brother has ‘the primal eldest curse upon’t’ and is, as the Ghost declares, ‘unnatural’ — a key idea in the play.
Ironically, however, the Ghost has earlier referred to his own sins as ‘foul crimes’. The echo of this at the end of the Ghost’s speech should surely make the audience aware that to call for personal, human revenge is, to say the least, odd when the Ghost is experiencing divine justice. This, combined with the way in which this first speech from the Ghost manipulates his son, making Hamlet feel pity and grief before he even knows what has happened to his father, may well make the audience suspicious and raise immediately in us the question that later occurs to Hamlet himself: is this an ‘honest ghost’?
