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The ghost in william shakespeare's hamlet
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Hamlet is a Shakespearean tragedy that discusses murder and revenge, whilst also intertwining morality and religion. Arguably the first instance that illustrates the view of religion is when the characters encounter the ghost of Hamlet Sr., which is viewed as a sinister omen. Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo are on guard duty in the castle at night when they see the ghost which Horatio says, “…bodes some strange eruption to our state” (1807). The unusual encounter frightens the men keeping watch as they fear it cannot mean anything good. After the rooster crows, the ghost vanishes, causing Marcellus to say, “Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, the bird of dawning singeth all night long. And then, they say, no spirit dare stir …show more content…
The nights are wholesome” (1810). This is another example of the view of religion that is present in the play, and shows the characters’ views on ghosts. Marcellus is saying that because it is the day of Jesus’s birth, ghosts do not wander the Earth and so the night is safe. Later, Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost for himself. The ghost tells him, “I am thy father’s spirit; doomed for a certain term to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires, till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away” (1823). The spirit of Hamlet Sr. is stuck in purgatory which is a Roman Catholic theology. Purgatory requires that, after death, a person must first purify himself in order to be worthy of heaven. The ghost of Hamlet Sr. roaming the Earth is bound by this purgatory. Ironically, the ghost is supposed to be atoning for his sins from his past life, yet asks Hamlet to murder King Claudius to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1823). Considering murder is an atrocious crime, it is paradoxical that the ghost would ask Hamlet to commit such
This play takes place mostly in Elsinore, Denmark between the fourteenth and fifteen century following the death of the late King Hamlet, who has been dead for two months prior to the beginning of the play (Shmoop Editorial Team). Act One commences in the middle of a routine nightly shift where Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, and two other guards witness the coming of a spirit that bears an uncanny resemblance to the recently deceased king. Meanwhile at Elsinore Claudius is crowned King with Hamlet’s mother as his queen. This chain of events causes discontent within Prince Hamlet as he delays his mourning time out of spite for the coronation. Afterwards, Horatio and the guards come to the consensus and tell Hamlet of their encounter so that the Prince may meet with the Ghost. The Ghost reveals to Hamlet that he was a victim of a well-planned murder at the hands of Claudius.
In the Shakespearian era they gave credence in the order of the great beings also known as the Theocentrictheocentric religion. Religion has been present for over 10 000 years B.C. and teaches societies different morals and beliefs. Like all of William Shakespeare’s plays, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark could have been partly catholic and partly protestant, but most theories prove that Hamlet himself was protestant. Hamlet the protagonist faces many conflicts that he must solve hastily. King Claudius ascended to the throne by murdering Hamlet’s father. Hamlet, who is the rightful heir to the throne, plots to take revenge against his uncle. In this play, Hamlet’s religion influences his action and decisions. Religion brought him to maketake decisions on the meaning of life, take action on an incest relationship and on an incorporeal being. actions on an incest relationship and a decision on an incorporeal being.
Therefore, the ghost who roamed the night seeking to speak out its grief and regrets before its death was merely a devil plotting to plant a seed of vengeance into the heart of Prince Hamlet, and cause strife within the royal family. However, contrary to the Protestant belief, Shakespeare introduces the ghost of King Hamlet to the audience as a sympathetic figure; the ghost’s emergence confirmed Hamlet’s fear: his uncle Claudius murdered his father. The ghost’s appearance along with his grief and deep sorrow would never allow Hamlet to assume that he was speaking with a devil; in act one and scene five of Hamlet, the ghost spoke to hamlet saying, “ doomed for a certain period of time to walk the earth at night, while during the day I’m trapped in the fires of purgatory until I’ve done penance for my past sins.” This contradicts the Protestant belief that the soul may never leave heaven or hell. However, in addition to Protestant belief, the Catholics believed that aside from heaven and hell, there was purgatory; a place where one who was not altogether evil but not good enough for Heaven would go to be purged of their sins to make them holier before they ascended to Heaven; and only with God’s permission are the spirits allowed to go to earth and deliver a message to the living. The Catholic belief is more closely related to King Hamlet’s story than the
The time in which Shakespeare's Hamlet was performed was one of great religious confusion for the Elizabethans. They had only recently come under Protestant rule, but they were all familiar with Catholic beliefs. Shakespeare used this knowledge to his advantage. The Ghost in Hamlet is an example of this. According to the Catholic belief system, the spirit of Hamlet's father is in purgatory. This means that he is not harmful but merely doing penance ‘till the foul crimes done in [his] days of nature are burnt and purg’d away.’ (I. v. 12-13) This is necessary because he was ‘cut off even in the blossoms of [his]sin.’ (I. v. 76) This attitude was not unknown to the Elizabethans. However, according to Protestant beliefs, purgatory did not exist, and any ghost was evil. This is reflected in Horatio’s scholarly concern that the ghost ‘bodes some strange eruption to our state.’ (I. i. 69) Because of this confusion, not knowing whether Old Hamlet’s ghost was ‘a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,’ (I. iv. 40) the Elizabethan audience would have supported Hamlet in his choice to be sure before killing Claudius, his father’s murderer. This shows how Shakespeare uses the audience’s uncertainty to manipulate their response to the play.
The question of why Hamlet delays in taking revenge on Claudius for so long has puzzled readers and audience members alike. Immediately following Hamlet's conversation with the Ghost, he seems determined to fulfill the Ghost's wishes and swears his companions to secrecy about what has occurred. The next appearance of Hamlet in the play reveals that he has not yet revenged his father's murder. In Scene two, act two, Hamlet gives a possible reason for his hesitation. "The spirit that I have seen / May be a devil, and the devil hath power / T' assume a pleasing shape" (2.2.627-629). With this doubt clouding his mind, Hamlet seems completely unable to act. This indecision is somewhat resolved in the form of the play. Hamlet comes up with the idea of the play that is similar to the events recounted by the ghost about his murder to prove Claudius guilty or innocent. Due to the king's reaction to the play, Hamlet attains the belief that the Ghost was telling the truth the night of the apparition.
Hamlet from the beginning of the play is confronted by a Ghost who questions all knowledge Hamlet has had about the afterlife. The Ghost of his father explains the idea that if you are murdered without confessing you are left to “hell fire” during the day and to wander the Earth at night. This idea leads Hamlet to question the ideology of life after death. The reader learns from this first encounter with the ghost that Hamlet is not
In Act 1 Scene 5, the ghost of Hamlet’s father says. GHOST “I am thy father's spirit. Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night. And for the day confined to fast in fires. Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away.”
The story of Hamlet Senior's death is the ghost story aspect of the play. Hamlet Senior, the late king, was being tormented in hell throughout the daylight hours and during the night he was forced to walk the castle. He stated that he was "Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confin'd to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my [being the late King's] days of nature Are burnt and purg'd away (50 lines 10-13). His release from this torture would not be permitted until his avenger is retaliated against by his son. Hamlet, Francisco and Bernardo all see the ghost of the late king, but the apparition will only speak to his son. The ghost brings an unnatural feel to the drama and leaves the reader/viewer wondering if it was real or all in Hamlet's mind.
At the start of the play, Horatio and his companions, Bernardo and Marcellus, witness the sudden and frightening apparition of Hamlet’s deceased father, former king of Denmark. The three friends are “[harrowed] with fear and wonder” as they encounter the ghost and Horatio is convinced to attempt conversation it (Shakespeare, I. I. pg. 2). Before engaging the ghost, Horatio recalls the time before “the mightiest Julius fell” when “the graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead / Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.” (Shakespeare, I. I. pg. 4) In that instance, the rising of the dead precipitated the brutal and premature demise of Julius Caesar, a horrible misfortune that rocked all of Rome. Likewise, Horatio sees the parallelism in the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost concluding that his manifestation must be Fate’s morbid signal of impending doom and disaster (Weller).
One of the very first pieces of Christian evidence provided to the audience in Hamlet is the idea of purgatory. The Ghost, in act one scene two, says that he is neither in Heaven nor Hell, and that during the night he is able to leave, but during the day he is stuck in purgatory until he has paid for his sins (Shakespeare 1.5.10-13). Purgatory, part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, is believed to be the place where souls go after the body is dead. In purgatory the soul is able to compensate for its sins it had not confessed and earn its way into Heaven. At first this idea of purgatory may not seem crucial to the play, but a closer analysis proves to contradict this thought. The whole idea of purgatory being neither Heaven nor Hell allows for the Ghost to return as a spirit. In his return to the real world, the Ghost, informs his son that he did not pass away from natural causes that Claudius, the Ghost’s brother, murdered him. If the Ghost did not make an appearance to Hamlet then he never would have found...
Hamlet explores the borders between madness and sanity. It is also located, like King Lear, in a frontier area between a pagan revenge ethic and Christian compassion, and between a ruthless, power-hungry adult world and a younger generation with gentler and more conciliatory aspirations. Hamlet's father, who now torments him, was himself a sinner, otherwise he would not have to return to earth as a ghost, demanding revenge. Hamlet is well aware of his father's crimes (III.3.81). Inviting his son to avenge his death is tantamount to turning the clock back, thereby perpetuating a pagan code of honour that seems outdated in Hamlet's own time. For - in contrast to Lear - Hamlet is a Christian of sorts, a fact that hampers rather than helps him in his mission. His Christianity is one of several reasons why he hesitates to carry out the ghost's instructions - and why, in the most famous of his seven soliloquies, he refrains from turning his weapon on himself. He worries that the spirit he has seen may be a devil. Obviously Christian in its origin is...
Death threads its way through the entirety of Hamlet, from the opening scene’s confrontation with a dead man’s ghost to the blood bath of the final scene, which occurs as a result of the disruption of the natural order of Denmark. Hamlet is a man with suicidal tendencies which goes against his Christian beliefs as he is focused on the past rather than the future, which causes him to fall into the trap of inaction on his path of revenge. Hamlet’s moral dilemma stems from the ghost’s appearance as “a spirit of health or a goblin damned”, making Hamlet decide whether it brings with...
his prison and roam at nights. The ghost then calls upon Hamlet to avenge the murder.
At first, Hamlet sees the ghost of his dead father and vows to avenge his death. “Christianity forbids followers to seek out spirits for advice or communication” (Ja) Hamlet has his faith tested because he is unsure about what his father is telling him. If the truth is that Claudius is the one who murdered Hamlet’s father then Hamlet will need to commit murder himself in order to fulfill his promise to his father’s ghost. “Hamlet, after the shock of his discoveries, becomes virtually another person and re-evaluates the situation in accordance with his religious views. Perhaps the ghost is just an illusion or mental disorder making him imagine this tale, and the murder of his father is illusory because he is not able to accept this kind of marriage and he wants to justify his crimes.” (****) Hamlet wrestles with his feelings and decides he must arrange for Claudius to admit to the murder instead of murdering Claudius himself. He is aware of the moral dilemma he finds himself in, if he kills Claudius then he, Hamlet may go to hell. If he refuses to kill Claudius then his father may be sent to hell. Hamlet knows from his religious background that murd...
A common motif in Shakespeare’s many plays is the supernatural element, to which Hamlet , with the presence of a ghost, is no exception. The story of Hamlet, the young prince of Denmark, is one of tragedy, revenge, deception, and ghosts. Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural element helps give a definition to the play by being the catalyst of the tragedy that brings upon Hamlet’s untimely demise. The ghost that appears at the beginning of the play could possibly be a satanic figure that causes Hamlet to engage in the terrible acts and endanger his soul. The supernatural element incorporated into the play is used as an instigator, a mentor, as well as mediation for the actions of the protagonist that ultimately end in tragedy, with the loss of multiple lives, as well as suscept Hamlet’s soul to hell. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the ghostly apparition causes a reader to question whether the ghost is a demonic force on the basis of its diction, conduct towards others as well as Hamlet, and it’s motive to kill.