Merry or sad shall’t be?Her. As merry as you will.
Mam. A sad tale’s best for winter:
I have one of sprites and goblins.
Her. Let’s have that, good sir.
Come on, sit down: Come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.
Mam. There was a man, —
Her. Nay, come, sit down; then on.
Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Her. Come on, then,
And give’t me in mine ear.”
The important part which Shakespeare has assigned to the ghost in “Hamlet” has a special value, inasmuch as it illustrates many of the old beliefs current in his day respecting their history and habits. Thus, according to a popular notion, ghosts are generally supposed to assume the exact appearance by which they were usually known when in the material state, even to the smallest detail of their dress. So Horatio tells Hamlet how, when Marcellus and Bernardo were on their watch (i. 2),
“A figure like your father,
Arm’d at point, exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them.”
Further on, when the ghost appears again, Hamlet addresses it thus:
“What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous.”
In the graphic description of Banquo’s ghost in “Macbeth” (iii. 4), we have a further allusion to the same belief; one, indeed, which is retained at the present day with as much faith as in days of old.
Shakespeare has several allusions to the notion which prevailed in days gone by, of certain persons being able to exorcise or raise spirits. Thus, in “Cymbeline” (iv. 2), Guiderius says over Fidele’s grave:
“No exorciser harm thee.”
In “Julius Cæsar” (ii. 1), Ligarius says:
“Soul of Rome!
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them.”
In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (v. 3) the king says:
“Is there no exorcist
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is’t real that I see?”
This superstition, it may be added, has of late years gained additional notoriety since the so-called spiritualism has attracted the attention and support of the credulous. As learning was considered necessary for an exorcist, the schoolmaster was often employed. Thus, in the “Comedy of Errors” (iv. 4), the schoolmaster Pinch is introduced in this capacity.
Within, indeed, the last fifty years the pedagogue was still a reputed conjurer. In “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, alluding to the ghost, says:
“Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.”
And in “Much Ado About Nothing” (ii. 1), Benedick says:
“I would to God some scholar would conjure her.”
For the same reason exorcisms were usually practised by the clergy in Latin; and so Toby, in the “Night Walker” of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii. 1), says:
“Let’s call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,
And that will daunt the devil.”
It was also necessary that spirits, when evoked, should be questioned quickly, as they were supposed to be impatient of being interrogated. Hence in “Macbeth” (iv. 1) the apparition says:
“Dismiss me. Enough!”
The spirit, likewise, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 4) utters these words:
“Ask what thou wilt. That I had said and done!”
Spirits were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence till interrogated by the persons to whom they made their special appearance.75 Thus Hamlet, alluding to the appearance of the ghost, asks Horatio (i. 2):
“Did you not speak to it?”
Whereupon he replies:
“My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once, methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak.”
The walking of spirits seems also to have been enjoined by way of penance. The ghost of Hamlet’s father (i. 5) says:
“I am thy father’s spirit,
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 days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.”
And further on (iii. 2) Hamlet exclaims:
“It is a damned ghost that we have seen.”
This superstition is referred to by Spenser in his “Fairy Queen” (book i. canto 2):
“What voice of damned ghost from Limbo lake
Or guileful spright wand’ring in empty ayre,
Sends to my doubtful eares these speeches rare?”
According to a universal belief prevalent from the earliest times, it was supposed that ghosts had some particular reason for quitting the mansions of the dead, “such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture, that a murderer might be brought to due punishment,” etc.76 On this account Horatio (“Hamlet,” i. 1) invokes the ghost:
“If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me.”
And in a later scene (i. 4) Hamlet says:
“Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?”
The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium; and thus the wandering shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The younger Pliny tells a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played all kinds of pranks, owing to his funeral rites having been neglected. A further reference to the superstition occurs in “Titus Andronicus” (i. 1),
We may compare the words “unquestionable spirit” in “As You Like It” (iii. 2), which means “a spirit averse to conversation.”
Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 450, 451.
