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Discerning the Ghost in Hamlet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Miriam Joseph C.S.C.
Miriam Joseph C.S.C.*
Affiliation:
Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Ind.
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Extract

The ghost in Hamlet is essential to the plot of the play and to an understanding of both the problem of Hamlet and his character. Therefore it is not surprising that it has engaged the close study of critics who offer various and conflicting interpretations.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 1961 , pp. 493 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Spurred by an article by his friend W. W. Greg1 maintaining that the ghost and all his words are nothing but a figment of Hamlet's overwrought brain, J. Dover Wilson in his reply asserts2 not only that the objectivity of the ghost is established by its appearance to four different characters who see it but also that these four persons representthree differing points of view concerning apparitions expressed in theological controversies of the time: Marcellus and Barnardo exhibit the traditional Catholic view expounded by Pierre Le Loyer (1586) that a soul might come to earth from purgatory; Horatio displays the skeptical attitude of Reginald Scot (1584), who flatly denies that spirits can assume material form and thereby appear to men; Hamlet expresses the Protestant view of Ludwig Lavater (1570) and King James I (1597) that ghosts, though they might be angels, are generally devils who assume the appearance of the departed.

Note 1 in page 493 “Hamlet's Hallucinations,” MLR, xii (1917), 393–421.

Note 2 in page 493 What Happens in ‘Hamlet‘ (New York,-1936), pp. 4, 61–74.

Note 3 in page 493 The Ghost in Hamlet: a Catholic ‘Linchpin‘?“ SP, xlviii (1951), 190, 192, 170.

Note 4 in page 493 “Hamlet” without Tears (Dubuque, Iowa, 1946), pp. 14–29.

Note 5 in page 493 “The Ghost in Hamlet: Pagan or Christian?” The Month, cxcv (1953), 230.

Note 6 in page 493 “King Hamlet's Ambiguous Ghost,” PMLA, lxx (1955), 1110.

Note 7 in page 493 West's remark (p. 1113) that the Friar's ghost in Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois suits Catholic pneumatology is a strange misconception. One can fully agree, however, that neither this ghost nor, more strikingly, that of Montferrers in The Atheist's Tragedy is a dramatic success.

Note 8 in page 494 See summary in Pope Benedict XIV, “De Servorum Dei Beatificatione, et Beatorum Canonizatione,” Opera Omnia (Prati, 1840), iii, 584–614. Also the Catholic Encyclopedia, in, 589; v, 28; xv, 477 f. These summaries draw from Scripture, St. Athanasius' Life of St. Anthony (c. 270–356; Migne, Patrología Graeca, xxvi), St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard's XXIII Sermon, works of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis de Sales, St. Catherine of Siena, Gerson, Suarez, etc. The discernment of spirits is applied also to the movements of nature and of grace, as described in Rom. vii. 19–25 and in The Imitation of Christ, Bk. iii, Ch. liv; cf. Hamlet, i.v.53–57.

Note 9 in page 494 Cf. Eph. vi. 11–12; II Cor. xi. 14; Apoc. xvi. 14; St. Martin resisted the devil when he appeared in the form of Christ. (Migne, Patrología Latina, xx, 174.)

Note 10 in page 494 Cf. Acts ix. 3–5; II Cor. xü. 4; Gen. xlvi. 1–4.

Note 11 in page 494 Cf. Lk. i. 11, 26; Mt. i. 20; Acts xii. 7–11.

Note 12 in page 494 Cf. the Voices of St. Joan of Arc; I Sam. xxviii. 11–25. St. Thomas Aquinas comments: “That the dead appear to the living in any way whatever is either by the special dispensation of God; in order that the souls of the dead may interfere in affairs of the living; and that is to be accounted as miraculous. Or else such apparitions occur through the instrumentality of bad or good angels, without the knowledge of the departed; … And so it may be said of Samuel that he appeared through Divine revelation; according to Ecclus. xlvi. 23, ‘he slept, and told the king the end of his life.‘ Or, again, this apparition was procured by the demons; unless, indeed, the authority of Ecclesiasticus be set aside through not being received by the Jews as canonical Scripture” (Summa Theol. i, q. 89, a. 8 ad 2). “The weight of both Jewish and early Christian commentators seems to give an affirmative answer to the question: Did Samuel's spirit really appear? … It was God rather than the witch who summoned Samuel to make clear the connexion between Saul's present misfortunes and past sins” (A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, New York, 1953, p. 317). Cf. Benedict XIV, p. 572.

Note 13 in page 494 “Hamlet” without Tears, p. 35.

Note 14 in page 495 Quoted ibid., p. 18, from an unsigned review in the London Times Literary Supplement, 9 Jan. 1930, p. 24, of J. Dover Wilson's edition of Lewes Lavater's Of Ghostes and Spiriles walking by Nyght (1929). John Shakespeare, the poet's father (not the Stratford shoemaker), was Usted among recusants in Stratford. There is therefore a strong probability that he was a Catholic; Shakespeare's mother was of a Catholic family and his upbringing was consequently probably Catholic. See J. H. de Groot, The Shakespeares and ‘The Old Faith‘ (New York, 1946), pp. 253, 10, 14, 100–110, 120. It may be worth noting, too, that Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton, belonged to a Catholic family.

Note 15 in page 495 Le Loyer, quoted by Wilson, p. 67.

Note 16 in page 496 Shakespeare uses the word purgatory in R&J, iii.iii. 18 and in Oth. iv.iii.77. Shakespeare's own belief in purgatory is no more involved than is his belief in fairies in MND. Cf. Marlowe in Doctor Faustas (iii.i.72) : “My lord, it may be a ghost, newly crept out of Purgatory, come to beg a pardon of your Holiness.”

Note 17 in page 496 See Semper, “The Ghost in Hamlet,” p. 231, with references to The Golden Legend and Froissart's Chronicles; Wilson, p. 80, with references to the review mentioned in n. 14 above, to OED, and to books by T. Wright and by O'Connor.

Note 18 in page 496 Interior Castle, Sixth Mansion, Ch. iii, Complete Works, tr. and ed. E. Allison Peers, ii, 281 f.

Note 19 in page 497 For the impact of the disjunctive syllogism implicit here see my Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York, 1947), p. 186.

Note 20 in page 497 Quoted from Caxton's translation, vt, 124, in “The Ghost in Hamlet,” p. 224.

Note 21 in page 497 Quoted loc. cit.

Note 22 in page 497 Summa Theologica, in, Appendix 1, q. 2, a. 1. Originally In IV Sententiarum, dist. 21, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 3.

Note 23 in page 498 So great is the importance attached to the last sacraments that a priest will risk his Ufe to administer them to the dying. In The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene represents even a priest weak in virtue responding to such a call although he had strong reason to suspect it was a trap, as it proved to be.

Note 24 in page 499 It is significant that the ghost appears at this time in his household dress, not in armor, and shows concern for his wife and son. The visit has a calming and healing effect on Hamlet. The queen does not see or hear the ghost (132). Cf. Acts ix. 7; xxii. 5–10; xxvi. 12–19; I Cor. xv. 8; Jn. xii. 28–30, where the bystanders hear something but not distinctly. The queen's experience (117–122) resembles that of the bystanders at Lourdes in 1858, who neither saw nor heard the apparition, but they witnessed the transformation of Bernadette, who did; similarly at Fatima in 1917 the crowd saw the transformation of Lucy when she saw and heard the apparition.

Note 25 in page 499 Quoted by Semper, “The Ghost in Hamlel,” p. 227.

Note 26 in page 500 Other images of poison and corruption: “the leperous distilment” (i.v.64), the world “an unweeded garden” (i.ii.135), “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours” (ii.ii.314); “the sun breed maggots in a dead dog” (181); the graveyard scene, the poisoned foil, the poisoned drink. See W. H. Clemen, The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), pp. 112–118.

Note 27 in page 500 Cf. York's words to Bolingbroke: “To find out right with wrong, it may not be” (Richard II, ii.iii.145).

Note 28 in page 500 Ed. Lily B. Campbell (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), pp. 420 f. Cf. R ii, i.ii.38; iv.i.126. Miss Campbell is one of those who have established the relevance of Saint Thomas to ideas widely current among Elizabethans. The very numerous and popular sixteenth-century English books on moral philosophy, she writes, “represent something like a composite picture of the … most revered ancients and the most influential Schoolmen … Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Cicero, … Thomas Aquinas, Augustine … fundamental ideas held by … thinkers of his generation … which … formed the background of the conception of tragedy.” Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes, Slaves of Passion (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), p. 47. See also pp. 16, 22, 48 f.

Note 29 in page 500 Claudius himself asserts that “no place,” not even the church, should “sanctuarize” murder (iv.vii.128). The same should apply to the throne.

Note 30 in page 501 Cf. God's command to Saul through an intermediary, Samuel, that he should slay all the Amalecites and spare none. Saul spared Agag, whom Samuel then slew, after telling Saul that the Lord rejected him for the sin of not killing all (I Sam. XV. 3, 9, 23, 33). Cf. I Cor. x. 8–11.

Note 31 in page 501 See Serñper, “The Ghost in Hamlet,” p. 228.

Note 32 in page 502 The Imperial Theme (London, 1931), p. 110.

Note 33 in page 502 On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy (Toronto, 1957), p. 43.

Note 34 in page 502 Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Baton Rouge, La., 1959): Shakespeare seems “to have possessed a comfortable and accurate knowledge of the basic principles… . Scholastic doctrine, transmitted by tradition, still persisted in the Renaissance mind as a heritage more or less unconsciously absorbed” (p. xi). Shakespeare was “acquainted not only with the ‘current coin’ of scholastic terms but also with the traditional doctrines” (p. 23). The modern investigator “will mainly concern himself with clarifying for the modern mind … those doctrines of the scholastic tradition which the artist has used in the externalization of his work of art” (p. 25). See also pp. 13–24. For Campbell, see n. 28 above.