What is the significance of the ghost in Hamlet? How would an Elizabethan audience and a modern audience have interpreted the play?

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Illa Ainaa Afifuddin

What is the significance of the ghost in Hamlet? How would an Elizabethan audience and a modern audience have interpreted the play?

Hamlet created around 1600 was one of Shakespeare’s longest and perplexing plays to be written. Like many of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet focuses on the theme of revenge-tragedy, romance and corruption. Also the idea of supernatural was very popular amongst the audience during the 16th century, thus the creating of the ghost within Hamlet. However the role of the ghost plays another purpose. It is an essential part because it is the foundation base of the play’s motives, as the ghost creates tasks and mission that Hamlet would have to accomplish on the behalf of the ghost. The idea of the supernatural, revenge and marriage are very much seen differently from the perspective of the Elizabethan audience and the modern audience. The existence of the supernatural has remained a mystery throughout the centuries, that even at the end of the play; Shakespeare is unable to have an answer to the subject. Shakespeare uses the idea of the supernatural to allow the Elizabethan audience to question and build up opinions regarding their current issues at the time. The play is set after the death of the Danish king, therefore creating instability within the nation. Furthermore, with the appearance of the ghost that comes every so often; the audience would link the existence of the ghost to the death of the late King of Denmark. Shakespeare’s timing of the play is in place with England’s ruler, Queen Elizabeth, who has been ruling for over forty years and is coming to her end. Ironically, three years after Hamlet was first performed at the Globe Theatre, Queen Elizabeth did pass away. The motif behind Hamlet is to provide the Elizabethan audience a sense of self opinion and awareness of the monarchy of England and events that might cause turmoil. The ghost has many purpose within the play; one being to be the subconscious mind of Hamlet who contemplates on the idea of right and wrong. Taking justice into his own hand and set things right for which he believes would be for the sake of the world Is the purpose of the ghost suppose to represent the subconscious mind of the citizen or the inner thoughts of Shakespeare? That is one of the questions that should be kept in the back of the mind of the readers.

Upon the entrance of the ghost, Shakespeare tries to convince the audience that it is real by using Horatio to believing that the ghost is real therefore convince the audience to accept these supernatural ways. “Tush, tush, ‘twill not appear,” Horatio speaks of the supernatural as though it is just myth and may simply believe that the ghost is unreal. In spite of this when Horatio encounters the ghost himself, he is left with no other choice but to accept the fact that supernatural existence are real, “…it harrows me with fear and wonder,” Horatio is afraid as to why it has returned. Here, he has a specific role. He is a philosopher, a sceptic and therefore does not believe in ghosts and such superstitions” [1] In contradictory to the Elizabethan perspective, a modern audience may not be as easily to believe that the ghost is real as the setting created space for the audience to doubt Horatio. “Horatio is a scholar, and he is sceptical about the existence of ghost…and that Horatio attributes the account they have given him to their ‘fantasy’”.[2]  The fact that Horatio and the two officers were on the lookout past midnight, the three of them may simply imagine the spectrum as the mind may have played tricks on them.

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Furthermore the ghost itself creates a mood of foreboding in relations to political issues during the Elizabethan era or maybe even to entertain the audience. “The Ghost, indeed, reminds us that even the greatest earthly strength is still subject to the controlling influence of a spiritual power beyond the laws of man.” [1] This then brings up the question among the audience as to whether the ghost is a good or evil spirit. “This bodes some strange eruption to our state,” Horatio believes that the arrival of the ghost has to do with the fact that Denmark may be facing ...

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