How important is the role of the Ghost inHamlet?.
The tragedy ofHamlet is a revenge tragedy.
By 1590 Shakespeare began to write plays for the stage. At that time the ancient Latin texts from Roman and Greek philosophers and writers, such as comedies from Plautus and Terenz, and the tragedies from Seneca were rediscovered, and Shakespeare rewrote a few of them into Elizabethan English.
The basic elements of Seneca's plays - sensational outrages, pathetical monologues, ghost appearances.
And revenge themes - had an immense influence on Shakespeare's texts.
In the minds of the common people there existed three reasons that made a ghost appear:.
The ghosts own demand for soothing disaster and if the ghost was the ghost of a murder victim, the torture of conscience, and therefore punishment of his murderer in haunting him which was the main function of the ghost - to incite revenge.
If a ghost appeared he could only speak when the world was directed to him first. This had to be done by that person for whom the message was destined. In the play the ghost already appears already in the first scene. Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio are the first persons to get in contact with the dead king.
"If thou hast any sound or use of voice, speak to me."(I.1.141-142).
The only person the ghost speaks to is Hamlet.
At night-time to witch hour a ghost was able to appear and only as long as it was dark.
"My hour is almost come, when I to sulph?rous and tormenting flames must render up myself."(I.5.4-6).
A ghost is also not visible for everybody. In the last appearance of the ghost in the Queen's closet it is only Hamlet who can see and hear him. The Queen is wondering: "Alas, he's mad!" (III.4.119), "to whom do you speak this?" (III.4.146) This changes her whole attitude towards Hamlet. She now thinks that he is "mad" and who would trust somebody who is out of his mind?.
Hamlet looked up to his father because he felt that he was a great leader and the bravest man that he knew, as Hamlet mentioned, "so excellent a king" (I.
