By Alessandra Mirabile
William Shakespeare is the man responsible for an array of wonderful play, though his plays are split up usually between comedies and tragedies. Hamlet is mourning the loss of his father when he hears something worse. The ghost of his father appears to him and asks him to avenge his murder. A ghost begs the question of whether it was meant to represent insanity or if there was a bigger belief in ghosts in sixteenth-century London. The history of ghost lore precedes Shakespeare’s time, however, the object here is to answer the question about what exactly were the beliefs of the people during this time?
For some perspective, in “Shakespeare’s Ghosts,” F.W. Moorman sheds some light on some of the earlier history of the supernatural. In the Middle Ages a popular belief was “that the ghosts of criminals, suicides, or murdered persons, walked the earth after death, that they sometimes entered into compacts with the living, that they appeared at midnight and ‘faded on the crowing of the cock,’ and that at their approach the lights grew dim—all this is a part of the primitive ghost-lore common to most European nations” (Moorman 197). This is very similar to contemporary ideas about the supernatural that exist in the United States. Keeping these beliefs in mind, Moorman goes on to say that, because of these beliefs, the Catholic church was able to better prove the idea of purgatory.
Surprisingly, there were many different views on the supernatural, among the two sects of Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism. Moorman quotes Louis Lavater, who was a Swiss protestant reformer, that Catholics believed that “… they come from Purgatory, and are permitted to walk the earth for a season, ‘for instructing and terrifying of the lyving.’ They maintain that these spirits ‘do not appeare nor answeare unto every mans interrogatories, but that of a great number they scantlie appeare unto one…’” It is interesting that Moorman brings up the Catholic view as during the Elizabethan era, Catholicism was against the law. England has a long history of going back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism. However, the Protestant view is quite different from the Catholic. The Protestants believed that “such spirits show themselves ‘in sundry sort, sometimes in the shape of a man whome we know, who is yet alyve or lately departed; otherwhiles in the likenesse of one whom we know not’” (Moorman 198). Shakespeare seems to use this later definition in Hamlet as the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to Hamlet himself and four others. Shakespeare was very good about keeping to the Protestant definition.
It is interesting to note that Shakespeare’s views on ghosts seem to go unknown among many scholars. In John Mullan’s article, “Ghosts in Shakespeare,” he says “…that the nature of apparitions was a topic of earnest debate amongst his contemporaries. This debate is dramatized in Hamlet, where the protagonist wonders aloud whether what appears to be the ghost of his father might not be a demonic trick…” Clearly, Shakespeare was aware of the beliefs about ghosts during his time and did use them to make his audience believe what was going on onstage. According to Mullan, ghosts were already used in plays before Shakespeare. “The appearance of the ghosts only to men who slept perhaps removed from any spectator’s religious uncertainties about whether ghost existed or not” (Mullan). It is interesting that Mullan mentions that ghosts only appeared to men, because in Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to Hamlet and four other men, but not to Hamlet’s mother, the queen.
Scholars have been able to shed a bit of light on the history of ghosts in the Elizabethan era and before. Shakespeare uses ghosts in a number of his plays and hopefully this has served to help better explain why Shakespeare might have designed his ghosts the way he did. Religion has had a lot to do with some of the beliefs of his time and ties in to the history of England in that way. Despite the research, there will always be questions about Shakespeare’s motives and his own personal beliefs.
Works Cited
Moorman, F.W., “Shakespeare’s Ghosts.” The Modern Language Review, Vol. 1, No. 3,
Modern Humanities Research Association, 1906, pp. 192-201,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3713608, 6 May 2017.
Mullan, John. “Ghosts in Shakespeare.” The British Library,
http://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/ghosts-in-shakespeare. Accessed 6 May 2017.
Image Source
Fuseli, Henry. Hamlet and the Ghost. 1789, Paint, The Art of Hamlet, Theatre History,
http://www.theatrehistory.com/british/art_of_hamlet.html. Accessed 9 May 2017.
Shakespeare Comes Alive! 