Yet, they brought over Horatio, a close friend of Hamlet, as they wanted to see if the ghost of which looked very similar to Hamlets father, would speak to him. As Horatio approached he was skeptical that the ghost would appear. As it mentions in the text :“Tush, tush, ’twill not appear.’. (Act 1, Scene i). The ghost did appear, and Horatio notes the fact that the late Hamlet is wearing armor from a past battle and states he will retrieve Hamlet the next day to go see the ghost.
He makes jokes out of his friends death and doesn’t seem to show any emotions. William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet really catches the attention of the reader. Hamlet is a crazy person who put a lot of time and effort into planning the kings death to avenge his father. This is a big part in making the play flow. If Hamlet isn’t a crazy psychopath then there wouldn’t be the long play that is so well known.
Through Hamlet, the ghost is the motive to make Hamlet kill Claudius, and the ghost plays a critical role to influence Hamlet. In the act 1, sense 1, the appearance of ghost implicated that something would be happening in Denmark and created interest and caution to audience and Horatio. Ghost always represents horror and fear nowadays, and people think that ghost maybe has unfinished hope before death or revenge for somebody. In the Shakespeare world, ghost shows up in somewhere, where it’s not supposed to be. That means that there is someone else, especially in western culture.
In Hamlet, when the ghost first appears on the palace guard’s watch, no one affirms that it is the spirit of Hamlet's father, only that it looks like him. Hamlet waits to be convinced that the ghost is indeed the spirit of his late father. When Hamlet decides to present “The Murder of Gonzago” before the king, he states as his motive: The spirit that I have seen May be the devil; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea and perhaps Abuses me to damn me. However, once he is convinced that the ghost is truly his father, Hamlet still appears to hesitate. Some critics have explained this by analyzing his situation.
Before, the ghost was the only proof Hamlet had of his father's murder and he needed its assurance in order to act out his revenge. After The Mousetrap and Claudius' reaction, Hamlet has seen with his own eyes the King's guilt and has enough evidence to seek revenge on his own - the reality of the ghost is no longer needed. Depending on the view of the ghost, the tragedy of Hamlet can be understood in several distinct ways. When seen as an omen, the blood bath with which the play ends is both unavoidable and foreshadowed. If the ghost is truly Hamlet's father, than Hamlet dies heroically, revenging his father's untimely murder.
The ghost is a very important character in Hamlet though it appears in few scenes. Its importance rises from the fact that it is through the ghost that we get to know how the father of Hamlet died before the play started. When Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, the latter tells him about "a murder most foul." He tells hamlet that he was poisoned by his own brother Claudius. But, the ghost is not important just because it is a prologue ghost but rather because it is also a revenge ghost.
I personally believe that the ghost was a real character who came from hell and appeared before Hamlet in order to have him exact his revenge on Claudius. I personally disagree with the author W.W. Greg’s interpretation of Hamlet’s ghost, and believe that his assumption that Hamlet is simply hallucinating his father’s ghost is without merit. Many of W.W. Greg’s claims relate Hamlet to other plays that were written by Shakespeare, claiming that due to how Shakespeare portrayed ghosts in his previous works, it would follow that Hamlet also fits into the same mold as these past writings. W.W. Greg even states, “I should like to be told what Shakespeare's views were of ghosts in general ... I am forced to turn to Shakespeare's other plays for suggestions as to how he represented these phenomena” (Greg 395).
They claim the reason behind this claim because it doesn’t act as a ghost from Purgatory would (Dean 519). He also discusses the differences in Shakespeare’s previous ghost appearances in his other plays. In his previous plays the ghosts appears at the end of the plays. However, in Hamlet he introduces the ghost at the beginning of the play. Along with the ghosts varying from the other plays, Paul Dean also discusses the differences from Shakespeare’s previous plays.
The ghost is bloody, as is consistent with Shakespearean era ghosts, as established by the "gory locks." (II 4, l. 48) This whole vision takes place shortly after Macbeth had his friend murdered by three men. It is also important to note that the ghost never utters a sound, an important difference between him and Shakespeare's other ghosts, as will be established later. The first illusion that Macbeth sees is that of a dagger, floating in the air and convincing him to commit the foul act of murder. Macbeth, at this point, is still together enough to realize what this dagger is.
The Ghost of King Hamlet Many Shakespeare plays contain ghosts, perhaps most notably and most disturbingly in Macbeth and Hamlet. The ghost in Hamlet is the apparition of prince Hamlet's father, the dead King Hamlet. However, up until the time when the ghost first appears to Hamlet, interrupting his speech and thoughts, it appears Hamlet is unaware that his father was murdered. As the ghost intones, "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" (Shakespeare I.v.9-13). While more people in Shakespeare's audience were inclined to believe in the supernatural and fantastic, it is likely the appearance of the slain King still has quite an impact on modern audiences.