Ghosts and Vengeance in Early Modern Theatre

Introduction to Shakespeare’s Ghosts

Para1Twenty-first century ideas of ghosts are either cartoonish, a figure wearing bed sheets with eye holes cut out, or they are the targets of ghosthunters on dramatic reality television shows focused on the paranormal. Belief in ghosts in the early modern period was widespread, according to scholar John Mullan. To 17th century audiences, all supernatural agents were regarded with the greatest suspicion, for they were far more likely to be the agents of the Devil than of God. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck claims that when ghosts hear the cock crow in the morning, wandering here and there, / Troop home to churchyards / Damned spirits all (3.2.403–404). They were frequently staged in the period, but beliefs about them remained uncertain and unsettling.

Staging Early Modern Ghosts

Para2In terms of staging, scholars believe ghosts would have appeared utilizing the trap door of the stage. Plays would likely either have the ghosts rise from the trap door as symbolically rising from the grave, or have their voices come from below to signify that they were from the underworld where the dead rest.
Para3Twentieth-century actor Michael Pennington remind us of
the unsettled circumstances of the first performances of Hamlet. For the Elizabethans, there was none of the orderly hush and sense of ceremony that attends darkened auditoria. The actors entered from opposite doors onto a stage open to the sky in the middle of a noisy city afternoon—an autumn afternoon in 1601, in the case of the first performance of Hamlet; later, in fashionable indoor playhouses like the Blackfriars, they had to pass among the various dandies sitting on stools on the stage itself […] through such the dead King of Denmark walked.(30)

Origins and Intentions of the Ghost in Hamlet

Para4When Hamlet sees the Ghost, his first instinct is to assume that he and his companions need to be protected from it: Angels and ministers of grace defend us! (1.4.39). He continues, specifically keeping in mind both possibilities, that the Ghost is an agent of God or the devil. Hamlet later asks Horatio if the ghost of his father was Pale or red? (1.2.248) Horatio tells him that he was […] very pale (1.2.249). In Elizabethan folklore, the color of the apparition could indicate if it was an evil ghost (red) or a good one (pale).
Para5Scholar Catherine Belsey notes the various terms that describe the Ghost: as the air, invulnerable (1.1.150), a spirit (repeatedly) but also a dead corpse (1.4.52) come from the grave (1.5.131), released by his tomb to walk the night (1.4.47–53). No wonder Hamlet sees the Ghost as having a questionable shape (see 1.4.40–43).
Para6This questionable shape then tells his living son,
But howsoever thou pursuest this act,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven.
(1.5.84–86)
Para7In telling Hamlet not to taint his mind, the Ghost involves Hamlet in a contradiction: he is to revenge his father by killing Claudius but to take no action against his mother, because she will be punished in heaven. But if she will be punished by God, why not (as Christian doctrine required) leave Claudius to heaven also? Hamlet does, after all, fear that the Ghost may not only be tempting him, but may be a devil in disguise:
The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil, and the devil hath power
T’assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.
(2.2.605–10)
Shakespeare’s audience would likely have considered this potential for damnation to be much more than a mere rationalization or excuse to procrastinate.

Key Print Sources

Belsey, Catherine. Shakespeare’s Sad Tale for Winter. Shakespeare Quarterly vol. 61, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1-27.
Davies, Owen. The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts. Palgrave McMillan, 2007.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Ghosts: a Range of Belief. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/the%20supernatural/ghosts.html.
Irslinger, Britta. Medb “The Intoxicating One”? (Re-)Constructing the Past Through Etymology. Academia. Jun. 2013. https://www.academia.edu/17511465/Medb_the_intoxicating_one_Re_constructing_the_past_through_etymology.
Macfarlane, Ross. Ghostly Comings and Goings in Shakespeare. The Wellcome Library. 5 Mar. 2016. https://wayback.archive-it.org/16107/https://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/05/ghostly-comings-and-goings-in-shakespeares-plays/.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Rand Einfeldt

Rand Einfeldt was a student at Utah Valley University.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Ghosts and Vengeance in Early Modern Theatre
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
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By Rand Einfeldt and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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