Ghosts and Vengeance in Early Modern Theatre Ghosts and Vengeance in Early Modern Theatre Author Rand Einfeldt Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England EncyclopediaEMEE

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Rand Einfeldt and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Introduction to Shakespeare’s Ghosts

Twenty-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

In 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.

Twentieth-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

When 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).

Scholar 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).

This 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)

In 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 <q>The Intoxicating One</q>? (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/.