thus alienate their souls from his service to that of Satan. In perfect accordance with these notions, Hamlet thus interrogates the apparition of his father, "Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd; Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell; And when his sceptical disposition subsequently betrays him into unreasonable doubts, he pauses on the reflection, "The spirit, that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps, Among other horrible projects attributed to malignant spectres, were those of weakening the bodies, and afflicting their victims with incurable diseases; of enticing them into places of gloom and peril, and exciting in them the deepest terror. Such is the foundation of the argument urged by Horatio to dissuade Hamlet from following the apparition "to a more removed ground: "— Act II. sc. 2. "What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, A knowledge of the future, as well as of the past, was generally assigned to the inhabitants of the world of spirits, and the souls of departed mortals were still supposed to be actuated by the same predilections, antipathies, and dispositions that influenced them in the body. Their appearance, therefore, set expectation on the rack: dire misfortunes were anticipated, futurity was to be laid open, or past events and crimes hitherto secret to be revealed. Spirits friendly to man were most desirous of bringing to light and punishment horrible offences against God, of forewarning those they loved of sudden and mminent peril, and of watching generally over their good: they interfered for the restitution of money unjustly withheld; and they informed their heirs in what secret places were hidden valuable papers and hoards of plate and money. An address of more strict propriety, therefore, could not have been framed than that of Horatio to the Ghost: * Act I. sc. 4. Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, If there be any good thing to be done, That may to thee do ease, and grace to me, If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life, For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, From the relation of those who saw the phantom, Hamlet immediately concludes, that Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."+ and the issue is precisely accordant with his conception. Common church-yard ghosts, who had no particular affairs, but appeared only to scare drunken rustics from rolling over their graves, sometimes appeared clothed in white, perhaps, in their winding sheets; but, when the business of spirits was important, they came in earthly *Act I. sc. 1. Act I. sc. 2. similitude of person, and precisely in the same dress that they customarily wore when alive. It was for no trite nor trivial matter that the "canoniz'd bones" of the deceased monarch "burst their cerements;" that the "sepulchre," wherein his body was "quietly in-urned," reop'd its "ponderous and marble jaws," "to cast him up again ;" and that he "revisited the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous;" but an affair of deepest consequence, the discovery and punishment of a most horrible crime. The exact resemblance, therefore, of the apparition to the father of Hamlet is pressed into particular notice: Marcel. "Look, where it comes again! Bern. In the same figure, like the king that's dead."* Horatio demands, "What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march?" + In reply to the question of Marcellus," Is it not like the king?" Horatio rejoins, When he the ambitious Norway combated; And when the Ghost re-appears, in the queen's closet, Hamlet particularly insists on its similitude to the person of the late king: "Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! In the play of Friar Bacon, by Robert Green, the shade of Pompey is exhibited in the very armour that he wore at the battle of Pharsalia. It was not often that apparitions took the shortest course to effect their object: Instead of appearing at once to the once to the person most interested, they usually commenced their operations by presenting themselves to the view of those only remotely, or, sometimes, not at all, concerned in their disclosures. The Danish monarch is first seen by Bernardo and Marcellus; then by Horatio, and, lastly, by Hamlet himself. The exciting of profound attention was the only object of the preparatory appearances of a Ghost, for his errand was never made known till he came in contact with the party to whom his mission was specifically directed. |