VI.—The Objectivity of the Ghosts in Shakspere

Elmer Edgar Stoll

doi:10.2307/456827

VI.—The Objectivity of the Ghosts in Shakspere

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020

Elmer Edgar Stoll

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Of late the common belief in the subjectivity of the ghosts in Shakspere has received fresh currency from the sanction of scholars who belong unquestionably to the newer school—Professors C. H. Herford and A. C. Bradley and a gentleman named F. C. Moorman who writes in the Modern Language Review. The first and the last may for the time being speak for all:—

Type: Research Article
Information: PMLA , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , 1907 , pp. 201 - 233

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/456827 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1907

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^{page 201 note 1} Common, even universal, the belief seems to be, whether among those who teach Shakspere or among those who write on him, though, as is the case with many beliefs, little is said about it. Nothing, so far as I know, has been said against it. Spalding in his valuable book on Elizabethan Demonology throws much light on the attitude toward the supernatural held by the Elizabethans in general, but little on that taken by Shakspere himself. Dramatic convention, moreover, he quite ignores.

^{page 201 note 1} Modera Language Review, April, 1906, pp. 195–6.

^{page 201 note 2} Eversley Shakspere, ix, p. 161.

^{page 201 note 3} Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, pp. 346–48. It is fair to add that in his Appendix, where Mr. Bradley sums up the evidence for the subjectivity of Banquo's Ghost, he expresses diffidence in it.—About the same distinctions as these scholars make are made by Professor Richard Moulton in his Moral System of Shakespeare, pp. 260 f., 299.

^{page 201 note 4} As regards the Ghost, not long since, I learn, by a well known professor in an eastern American university in a lecture to his class; as regards the Sisters, by such uncompromising idealists as Gervinus. The last named was confuted by Spalding.

^{page 201 note 1} In the decay of the drama, in Shakspere's Cymbeline and Henry VIII and in Webster (see the author's John Webster, pp. 120–1, 150–1), the supernatural begins, under the influence of the Masque, to be treated without much meaning, spectacularly. See below p. 224.

^{page 201 note 2} The second appearance of the Ghost in Hamlet, to protect Hamlet's mother. Cf. the Friar's Umbra in Chapman's Bussy and the friendly service of Jack's Ghost in Peek's Old Wives’ Tale.

^{page 201 note 3} Marston's Sophonisba, Ghost of Asdrubal.

^{page 201 note 4} The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611), Ghost of the Lady.

^{page 201 note 5} Webster's White Devil, Brachiano's Ghost; Chapman, etc. It is a widely spread superstition that ghosts—the ghosts of friends—come to fetch the souls of those left in the land of the living. Cf. Frazer's Golden Bough, i, p. 132.

^{page 201 note 1} Cf. Nash's Summer's Last Will and Testament, Hazlitt's Dodsley, viii, p. 77.—The interpretation originates, I surmise, with Professor Kittredge.

^{page 201 note 2} A capital instance this of the classical.

^{page 201 note 1} Antonio's Revenge, v, 1,—‘tossing his torch about his head in triumph.’

^{page 201 note 2} See below, p. 213. He points at his wounds.

^{page 201 note 3} As the Knight of the Burning Pestle was acted in 1611, it is almost contemporary with Forman's notice. See below, p. 222.

^{page 201 note 1} K. B. P., v, 1.

^{page 201 note 2} Cf. such irony in the fulfillment of Anne's curse of herself, Richard III, i, 2 and iv, 1, 72–85, and of Buckingham's prayer that his friend may be faithless, v, 1, 12–21.—

That high All-seer which I dallied with

Hath turned my feigned prayer on my head

And given in earnest what I begged in jest.

And compare in point of abruptness of reversal 1 Hen. VI, i, 1, 51–61.

^{page 201 note 1} Atn, vBpis.

^{page 201 note 1} Queen Anne (v. supra, p. 208) suffers from her own curse.

^{page 201 note 1} v, 3, 45; v, 5, 50; v, 3, 94–6. Antony's prophecy, iii, 1, 270 f:

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

^{page 201 note 2} Cf. the whole tenor of their words in the parley, v, 1, especially ll. 50–5.

^{page 201 note 3} The impression is confirmed by a passage of like tenor in Antony and Cleopatra, where Sextus Pompey says to Octavius and Antony:

To you all three,

The senators alone of this great world,

Chief factors for the gods, I do not know

Wherefore my father should revengers want,

Having a son and friends: since Julius Caesar,

Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,

There saw you laboring for him, etc.

And that is it

Hath made me rig my navy; ….

with which I meant

To scourge the ingratitude that despiteful Rome

Cast on my noble father.

A. and C., ii, 6, 8 ff.

And the passage testifies as well to the objectivity of the ghost of Cæsar and the revengefulness of his mission.

^{page 201 note 1} Macbeth, v, 7, 15: —

If thou be'st slain and with no stroke of mine,

My wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still.

This is the true spirit of vendetta, still stronger in the remarkable passage which precedes this: —

Malcolm. Let's make us medicine of our great revenge,

To cure this deadly grief.

Macduff. He has no children. iv, 3, 214 f.

‘He’ is Macbeth, and Macduff, like the bloodiest of the Kydian revengers, seems to be meditating in the strain of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The Clarendon Press Editors soften this interpretation a little; Bradley and others reject it; and I myself would not insist upon it.

^{page 201 note 2} See Bradley, pp. 492–3. In quoting Professor Bradley I sometimes condense his language.

^{page 201 note 1} Macbeth, ii, 1, 47.

^{page 201 note 2} See reference below, p. 219.

^{page 201 note 3} See argument 6, below.

^{page 201 note 1} The same subjective point of view is taken by Professor Moulton, Moral System, p. 261. Indeed, he seems bent on taking no other point of view: the blood on First Murderer's face as he appears at the door he makes out to be ‘in Macbeth's imagination.'

^{page 201 note 1} P. 493.

^{page 201 note 1} 'Self-deception.’ A different interpretation, recently proposed by a German critic whose name I cannot now recall, will not hold.

^{page 201 note 1} Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy, ii, 6; iii, 2; Massinger's Roman Actor, v, 1; Webster's White Devil, v, 4. See also below, pp. 224–5, notes, and Cymbeline, v, 4, 30–151, in particular 130–151.

^{page 201 note 2} Obviously there would be no point in Banquo's Ghost's denouncing a retributory death which should come at the hands of Macduff, not Fleance, to appease the ghosts of Macduff's wife and children. Contrast the situation in Julius Cæsar.

^{page 201 note 1} The Roman Actor, The Unnatural Combat.

^{page 201 note 2} White Devil, Brachiano's Ghost.

^{page 201 note 3} Fletcher (Rolfe's Macbeth, p. 216) and others.

^{page 201 note 4} Reginal Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, Nicholson's reprint, 1886, p. 449: ‘Also they never appeare to the whole multitude, seldome to a few, and most commonlie to one alone. Also they may be seene of some, and of some other in that presence not seene at all.’ Hazlitt's Brand, 1905, i, 270: … ‘rarely visible to more than one person, although there are several in company.’ And Wilson (v. Furness) reminds us of Pallas appearing to Achilles at the council.

^{page 201 note 5} Bussy's Ghost appears to Cleremont, p. 206 (Shepherd's ed.), without being heard or seen by Guise, although, p. 209, he is visible to others.

^{page 201 note 6} Works, London, 1874, iii, p. 423.

^{page 201 note 7} Mr. Richard Moulton, indeed, after accepting this ghost as objective at the first appearance is inclined to refuse him that quality at the second. This the Elizabethan historian cannot possibly do. If the Ghost was real at the first appearance, how to the audience, as he comes and speaks at length to stay Hamlet's wrath and whet his purpose, can he, without any hint on the part of the author, lose his reality? If the Ghost was a ghost when he appeared in person to command, he is just as much one now that he appears to reiterate his command.

^{page 201 note 1} Tempest, iii, 2.

^{page 201 note 2} Tempest, iii, 3, 52–82. It is possible, but not probable, that here Ariel, like Prospero (stage-direction, l. 18), is visible to the audience (and Prospero) only.

^{page 201 note 1} Second Henry VI, iii, 3. That Beaufort's vision is of Duke Humphrey's ghost appears from sc. 2, ll. 171 and 372–4, and from 1. 15 of sc. 3. In the original of Second Henry VI, the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, the treatment of this subjective ghost is similar, and the identity of it with Duke Humphrey's is made explicit. Cf. Hazlitt's Shakspere's Library, Pt. ii, vol. i, pp. 479, 482, where both Vaux and the Cardinal himself roundly declare the figure seen to be Duke Humphrey's ghost. Shakspere softens these statements in his effort to get a vaguer, more inward meaning.

^{page 201 note 2} Skeptical as Shakspere was not and living in a more skeptical atmosphere (compare Donne in his poems) Webster, after the later Elizabethan fashion, presents his ghosts as silent and more insubstantial. Yet Isabella's Ghost (White Devil, iii, 3), although she purports to be the coinage of Francisco's ‘melancholy,’ appears on the stage and that, too, to her revenger; and the other ghost, Brachiano's, though its demeanor is symbolical, is itself substantive—cannot at any rate be interpreted as subjective—and is actual enough to throw earth at Flamineo.

^{page 201 note 1} If Forman is right here, he is describing the second entrance and a second seating of the Ghost. This took place from behind—not before Macbeth's eyes like the other—and by bringing him within an ace of sitting in the horror's lap must have produced a tragic sensation well over the verge of the comic. It would be like the Friar's Umbra frightening away the murderers of Bussy.

^{page 201 note 2} This passage has been used to determine the date of Macbeth—the Puritan was published in 1607—but the context proves that it has no reference to that or any play.

^{page 201 note 1} Romeo and Juliet, v, 1, 6–10.

^{page 201 note 2} Cymbeline, v, 4.

^{page 201 note 3} Julius Cæssar, ii, 2; iii, 3, 1–4. Cf. Duke Humphrey's dream, 2 Henry VI, i, 2; Andromache's, Troilus and Cressida, v, 3, 10 and 63; Balthazar's, Romeo and Juliet, v, 3, 138, etc. In tragedy all Shakspere's bona fide dreams are fulfilled, except in the rare cases, where, as in that of Duchess Eleanor (if hers be bona fide), they flatter the subject in his folly.

^{page 201 note 4} So the messengers of Zeus appear to mortals; so Patroclus's Ghost appears to Achilles and Hector's to Æneas. Subjective, of course, none of these can be. As conceived by the primitive mind, indeed, the dream is a state in which the soul is out of the body and is roaming about, collecting information, communicating or being communicated with; and the question of subjectivity here is simply not in point.

^{page 201 note 1} A statue had been carried off by the ghosts in his dream.

^{page 201 note 2} As a stage-device compare the masque-like dream of Posthumus, Cymbeline, v, 4. Nothing could be more objective—Jupiter descends with a tablet the oracular contents of which are read by Posthumus on awaking. But the marvel is without the sincerity or the meaning of the ghosts in Hamlet and Macbeth. Jupiter and the apparitions of the Leonati make mere dramatic machinery.

^{page 201 note 1} Marlowe's.

^{page 201 note 2} With one accord they, as Elizabethan Machiavels, scoff at conscience. Cf. Meyer's Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama for the evidence, and Richard's own words,—

Conscience is but a word that cowards use. v, 3, 309.

^{page 201 note 3} See references to the Atheist s Tragedy and the Roman Actor above, pp. 223–4. See especially the remarkable parallel the dream of Posthumus cited above, p. 218, note. Posthumus doubts the reality of his vision with the tablet, or book, in his hand! The Elizabethan mind seems indeed to be incapable of keeping the objective and the subjective clear. See below.

^{page 201 note 4} This of course is old folklore. See Brand, quoting Grose, p. 69:—‘this is so universally acknowledged, that many eminent philosophers have busied themselves in accounting for it, without once doubting the truth of the fact.’ In Julius Cæsar, at the appearance of Cæesar's Ghost—'how ill this taper burns!'

^{page 201 note 1} As, i, 3, 222; iv, 1, 85.

^{page 201 note 2} v, 3, 230.

^{page 201 note 3} See above, pp. 221, note.

^{page 201 note 1} Compare Professor G. B. Churchill's Richard III up to Shakespeare for the contributions to the Richard legend by chronicler and by poet.

^{page 201 note 1} Professor Churchill, though somewhat non-committal on the question of subjectivity, insists on a difference between these ghosts and the ghosts of the ordinary revenge plays (p. 516). And, as we have been admitting, a difference there is: not only are they interpreted by Richard as the advocates of conscience, but they avoid the words revenge or vindicta and they threaten the pains of despair quite as much as those of defeat and death. Nevertheless I cannot admit that these ghosts do not appear, as do the revenge ghosts, ‘to satisfy themselves.’ Each one recounts his wrongs, curses Richard's sword and lance in battle, and foretells his death. Prophecy, perhaps, is their main office, as often in the Elizabethan and the Classical drama, but, as there again, it is the prophecy of the injured, resentful ghost.

^{page 201 note 2} See above, p. 211.

^{page 201 note 3} Julius Cæsar, iv, 3, 274—enter the Ghost of Cæsar. This is in the first edition, the Folio of 1623.

^{page 201 note 4} Julius Cæsar, v, 5, 17.

^{page 201 note 1} Richard III, v, 1, 20 f.

^{page 201 note 1} See Spalding, pp. 88 ff.; Bradley, pp. 341–2; Herford.

^{page 201 note 1} Antony and Cleopatra, i, 2; 2 Henry VI, iv, 1, 33 f.

^{page 201 note 2} It is noteworthy that the curses are deliberately introduced by the dramatist into his fable, without authority in his sources, as a convenient, though crude and highly superstitious, means of giving a local habitation and a name to nemesis.

^{page 201 note 3} Rich. III, iv, 4, 182–195.

^{page 201 note 4} And our age like every other reads its own ideas into the literature of ages gone by. So in England, America, and Germany it has done with Shakspere, as with Dante, Homer, and the Bible. The present writer recalls that of a dozen themes or more received from freshmen during the current year on the old ballad of the Wife of Usher's Well almost all explained the return of the drowned men to their mother as a dream or an hallucination.

^{page 201 note 1} ‘We cannot even be absolutely certain,’ says Brandes, speaking of ghosts and witches, as if it were enough to concede, ‘that Shakespeare himself did not believe in the possible existence of such beings.’

^{page 201 note 2} Spalding's Elizabethan Demonology, pp. 34–6. Scot gives names for seventy-nine, and Shakspere mentions twenty. The Good Angel and the Evil Angel in Faustus, who contend for the mastery of the hero's soul, are not allegorical, as, in their prepossession, most critics take them to be, but are as substantive—as substantial one might almost say—as the hero himself.

^{page 201 note 1} Spalding, pp. 64–6, 80.

^{page 201 note 2} Op. cit., pp. 53–5.

^{page 201 note 3} See Lecky (N. Y., 1873), vol. i, chap. i, p. 123, for an account of James presiding over the horrible tortures of Fian.

^{page 201 note 4} Bacon, Seiden, Sir Thomas Browne, all avowed their belief in witchcraft. See Lecky, chap. i, for evidence which shows the universal acceptance of a belief in which Protestant and Puritan outdid even Catholic and Anglican. The last great advocate of the belief was Wesley.

^{page 201 note 5} Spalding, p. 31.

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