Ever since I reread Hamlet during Maj. Knepper’s Ways of Reading, I was particularly interested in the story of Hamlet and the religious and social themes within the story. I grew up with a Catholic Mother and a Protestant Father, so religious themes and their particular angle have always been interesting, as I have heard many a debate on Catholicism versus Protestantism. In Ways of Reading, I did a paper on suicide in Hamlet and the religious and legal implications of it. This was historically interesting to me as I knew little about the topic and also one of my best papers. When given the option to pick a topic in ERH321, I knew I would like to further explore Hamlet. While I wanted to go a different direction from the theme of suicide this time, I thought that looking at the religious perception of the ghost would make an interesting paper. The most significant discovery in my research process was from Corum in that English theater combined both the Protestant and Catholic concept of ghosts as their use of ghosts had several functions and purposes. In Shakespeare’s context I found this interesting as I often find myself attempting to spot Catholic themes in his work. I think this resonated with me because of my upbringing and that I am particularly sensitive in religious differences within Christianity and am very fascinated by the differences between the Churches.
The Dane of the Dead- a Haunting in Hamlet
In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the character of King Hamlet’s ghost is the cause of much controversy. He alarms the guards and young Hamlet’s friends on the night watch and motivates Hamlet to commit the vengeful killing of the supposed murderer, King Claudius. While it is suggested in the text that King Hamlet has returned to earth from purgatory and the ghost claims to be the ghost of King Hamlet, this cannot be known for certain as the ghost could very well be an imposter. The nature of the ghost is very ambiguous as the ghost’s claim to his identity and origin are questionable:
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. (I.v.8-12)
After this claim is made about righting his wrongs, the ghost goes on to demand that Hamlet “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” (I.v.24). Hamlet’s response to the ghost is particularly reckless especially in the context of how ghosts were viewed in medieval Europe, as Hamlet not only believes, but follows the ghosts instructions.
Even before Hamlet meets the ghost, the audience meets the ghost in a manner that already leaves the audience questioning the ghost. In Act I Scene IV, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus encounter the Ghost after waiting out on the rampart to encounter the ghost again. The fact that the ghost encounters men on watch is fascinating as according to Richard Corum, this is somewhat of a historical theme when it comes to ghosts in the middle ages because there were laws regarding soldiers on watch and ghosts as “bored members of night watches so frequently ‘amused themselves by summoning up ghost’s during the hours of darkness’ that ‘regulations for medieval gilds sometimes included a clause banning’ such behavior” (Corum 120). Because the audience would have an understanding of this, they would understand exactly what could be going on in a situation when guards on watch witness the ghost of King Hamlet. They would see the negligence and boredom as a cause for interacting with the ghost.
As the three sit and talk, the ghost appears taking them by surprise and fear. Hamlet especially reacts out of fear, but has an interesting reaction that invokes a form of Christian faith, but either a false or immature faith. Upon seeing the Ghost, Hamlet bursts out with “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” (I.iv.39). Hamlet’s initial reaction calls for the protection of angels and saints, but does not call on the name of the lord or on his own faith to combat evil like Gifford later suggests (Jordan 167). The fact that Hamlet does not call on Jesus directly suggests his faith is not great and that he is susceptible to the trickery of demons in disguise. If Hamlet is not praying to God for support in times of trouble, he does not have his mind on the divine, which is especially dangerous while he is dealing with the supernatural.
Hamlet knows that ghosts are questionable in their origin and even questions the ghost wondering if it is good or evil:
Be thou spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com’st in questionable shape. (I.iv.40-43)
While he questions the nature of the ghost, he is still very trusting of the spirit despite the ambiguous and unknown nature of the ghost. Depending on Hamlet’s theological stance, the ghost could be a human soul in purgatory, yet the spirit is not seeking forgiveness or prayers of salvation (Jordan 165). In Understanding Hamlet by Richard Corum, Corum states that historically, the Catholic view of ghosts would have included the following five possibilities, that a ghost was either an angel, a deceased soul from purgatory, a demon from hell disguised as a human soul, a hallucination, or a fraud by a human in disguise (Corum 115). While Shakespeare is writing this play in Protestant England, where Protestant doctrine only accepts the last three possibilities Corum listed about ghosts (115), the theater was known to use all five possibilities as the theater desired “ghosts of everyday life” (Corum 116). It would also be logical that the Catholic views of purgatory and ghosts remain in English culture, especially with the commoners as these beliefs had been left there from pre reformation times and were already part of their local culture and folklore. These lenses of viewing ghosts allow critics of today to consider how the audience would have viewed both the ghost himself and Hamlets reaction to the ghost. The audience would be well aware of these cultural understandings of the ghosts from local, religious, and theater traditions. While Catholicism was looked down on in some ways in England, a lot of their local tradition would have had Catholic heritage, as England was Catholic for a long time before the reformation.
Horatio and Marcellus beg Hamlet not to trust the ghost or follow it and to not follow, “[Marcellus] But do not go with it. [Horatio] No, by no means.” (I.iv.62-63). Hamlet’s friends, more skeptical of the ghost, possibly more devoted in faith, see the danger Hamlet is putting himself in. By allowing himself to be given over to such dangers, Hamlet is already risking his virtue as he threatens his best friends with murder in order to follow and obey this unknown spirit:
My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve. Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen. By heaven, I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me!
I say, away!- Go on, I’ll follow thee. (I.iv.81-85)
Essentially, Hamlet threated to kill his friends if they are to stop him. Not only does Hamlet show that his morals and virtue is already compromised in this pursuit of the spirit (which a good spirit would not want to lead him away from Christian virtue) he does not even value his own life:
Why, what should be the fear?
I do not set my life at a pin’s fee,
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
It waves me forth again. I’ll follow it. (I.iv.65-68)
Hamlet essentially argues that his life is worth very little to him and that he will follow the ghost anyway. He is not concerned for his soul and does not seem to care about the risk he is assuming while some authors of the time such as Laveter argued that to die was to either be with the lord in heaven or to suffer in hell (Jordan 165) which does not coincide with Hamlet’s thought process where he simply lets his emotions that long for his father steer him. In such a poor emotional state, Hamelt is giving himself over to his melancholy that seems to have devalued his self worth or rather given into an evil spirit in which,
This evil spirit goes about seeking whom he may devour, and should he chance to find a man already of a melancholic and Saturnian humor, who on account of some great loss, or haply because he deems his honor tarnished, the demon here has a fine field to his hand, he will tempt the poor wretch to depths of misery and depression… Sometimes they appear under the likeness of some individual who can at once be recognized.. it may be [a man] long since dead. (Corum 120-121).
Real or unreal, the experience of meeting the ghost has already proven very negative for Hamlet’s emotional wellbeing within the first two scenes of meeting the ghost.
While purgatory the ghost’s claim to his residency in purgatory is debatable, the useful purpose purgatory served for the Church is not. In Stephen Greenblatt’s Hamlet in Purgatory, Greenblatt argues purgatory allowed the church to explain hauntings and assist grieving persons in mourning and coping (102-103). While this is true, there was a whole new need for understanding the supernatural now that the Church had a reason to promote the concept of purgatory. In order to understand the nature of spirits members of the church may encounter, the Church had to make doctrine on how to confront this issue. The church developed the process of “discretio spirituum– a means to distinguish good and evil spirits.” (Greenblatt 103). As part of this process, there is a type of interview in which the ghost must “submit to a rigorous cross-examination centered on six key questions” in which the interrogator can find if the ghost is of God and with a heavenly cause or is fallen and satanic (Greenblatt 103). While this doctrine could be considered quite legalistic, Hamlet does not try any of this style of questioning, he simply takes the ghost at his word when the ghost says he is his father. Hamlet later confirms this, but never makes an outright effort to boldly question the ghost. Even as the ghost requests that hamlet commit a violent act of revenge (I.v.24) despite already admitting he is in purgatory for his “foul crimes done in my days of nature.” (I.v.11). Greenblatt argues that the ghost is experiencing the fires of purgatory or hell deservingly so as he is committing evil,
“What the ghost experiences is unmistakably ‘evil pain,’ justly inflicted upon him for his evil deeds, and therefore, until such time as he is cleansed, may call him an evil spirit” (Greenblatt 113). The fact, that even while the ghost is suffering, he is trying to promote violence that will harm others and eventually his own son via repercussions. If this soul were truly trying end his suffering, he would be asking for prayers and alms to the church in his name, not asking his son to commit grave sin for his pride’s sake.
The ghost returns later on in the play during Act III, in order to remind Hamlet to kill Claudius again. The ghost again proves to be blood thirsty and carnal for someone who is attempting to earn their way out of purgatory, “When the ghost returns, it is concerned about Gertrude and, although Hamlet has just foregone killing Claudius in order to ensure the damnation of his soul, it does not chide him for this unchristian sentiment but informs him that it has come to ‘whet’ his almost blunted purpose” (Siegel 149). If the ghost was pursuing salvation from purgatory, the ghost would be upset that Hamlet tried to destroy the salvation of Claudius, which would violate the Lords commandments.
In so many instances, Hamlet’s relationship to the ghost is shown to be plausible at best. With several examples of commonly held beliefs about ghosts and the spiritual world, the audience would have known better than to interact with the ghost and would have seen Hamlet’s choice to trust the ghost one of the first of many tragedies in this play. Hamlet took the ghost and his claims entirely at face value and thought he could handle the situation by himself. However this could not be further from the truth, as a Christian audience would have thought, “no sword of tempered steel however trusty will avail, we must fight with spiritual weapons.” (Corum 121). Despite this line of thinking that the audience would have held, Hamlet thinks he is capable of handling this ghostly encounter within his own means. By giving himself over to an unknown spirit, Hamlet has not only ignored God, but has sealed the fate of his family, Denmark, and possibly his salvation.
Works Cited
Bronfen, Elisabeth, and Beate Neumeier, editors. Gothic Renaissance: A
Reassessment. Manchester University Press, 2014. JSTOR.
Corum, Richard. Understanding Hamlet. Greenwood Press, 1998.
Draper, John W. “The Elder Hamlet and the Ghost.” The Shakespeare Association
Bulletin, 9. 2 (1934):75–82. JSTOR.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton University Press, 2001. Print.
Siegel, Paul N. “Discerning the Ghost in Hamlet.” PMLA, 78.1 (1963): 148–
- JSTOR.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Edited by Constance Jordan, Pearson Education,
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