Shakespeares Hamlet - Hamlet and the Ghost Essay -- GCSE English Lite

Hamlet and the Ghost      Ã‚  Ã‚   This essay will analyze a very important, non-human character in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet. This is, of course, a reference to the supernatural creature, or Ghost.    A.C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy discusses the quandary into which the Ghost put the protagonist:    What, it may be asked, was hamlet to do when the Ghost had left him with its commission of vengeance? The King was surrounded not merely by courtiers but by a Swiss bodyguard: how was Hamlet to get at him? Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder? If he did, what would happen? How would he prove the charge? All that he had to offer in proof was – a ghost story! Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but no one else had heard its revelations. (97)       Frank Kermode in â€Å"Hamlet† fits the Ghost into the local and national scene:    But meanwhile the ghost – â€Å"this thing† – has appeared. (Horatio as skeptic raises questions as to its status which could have been avoided.) There has been speculation as to its purpose, but one thing seems sure: it has to do with the state of the nation – it   â€Å"bodes some strange eruption to our state† – and with the armaments drive now in progress under the threat from Norway. That it genuinely has to do with the state of the nation – its spiritual rather than its merely political state – we shall learn; and to give us a â€Å"musical’ sense that this is so, there is the unexpected speech about Christmas. (1138)    The Ghost means more than a commentary on the spiritual and political state of the nation. Gunnar Boklund’s   â€Å"Judgment in Hamlet† introduces the Ghost in terms of the dilemma of the protagonist:      It is a commonplace to refer to Hamlet’s â€Å"... ...Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1992.    Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html    Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000 http://www.bartleby.com/215/0816.html    West, Rebecca. â€Å"A Court and World Infected by the Disease of Corruption.† Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.    Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. â€Å"Shakespeare.† Literature of the Western World. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.