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For Dr Hartle
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How are ghosts presented and what do they signify in Hamlet and Richard III
In comparing the use of ghosts as a dramatic device in these two plays, we can tease
out the similar themes in Hamlet and Richard III. Despite the differences between
their roles in each play, and the purposes they serve, they do raise similar themes
about the need for truth, dramatic irony as well as enhancing the atmosphere and
suggesting a sense of fate. The ghosts highlight the question of what is morally right
and good within the plays.
It is in Act 5 Scene 3 that the ghosts appear in Richard III; the ghosts of
Richard’s victims address Richard and Richmond in their sleep, wishing them
destruction and victory respectively for the Battle of Bosworth the next day.
Richmond only comes on stage in Act 5, and so this scene affords direct comparison
between Richmond and Richard. By having all of Richard’s victims come on stage it
forces the audience to take into account the number of murders he has committed.
Richard’s charisma holds on to audience sympathy, (which must wane after the
murder of the two princes, when even the murderers are disgusted with themselves),
but this tallying of victims, compared to Richmond’s clean slate, emphasises the need,
dramatically, for Richard to be replaced. Each ghost orders Richard to “despair” and
“die” – inciting Richard to sin, by despairing, giving up all hope in the Grace of God.
He is beyond redemption at this point. By appearing one by one, they also undo
Richard’s perception of characters as interchangeable, because he has been unable to
erase them entirely; these characters live on in spirit, and also in the memories of
other characters. He tells Elizabeth in Act 4, Scene 4, when he is trying to convince
her to help him marry her daughter,
If I did take the kingdom from your sons,
To make amends I’ll give it to your daughter.
(4.4.298-299)
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Richard behaves as though he can replace people other characters; as though his
actions do not mark him as an individual, a misconception that the ghosts undermine.
The effect the visitation of the ghosts has on Richard is intriguing – for the first time
he seems at the very least fearful of the consequences of his past behaviour and
recognises that he is completely alone. He wakes from his dream, apparently
dreaming of battle and cries,
Have mercy Jesu! Soft, I did but dream.
(5.3.181)
For the first time, Richard appeals to God, showing that although he has previously
wilfully ignored any kind of Christian teaching, the appearance of something spiritual
and supernatural can affect him, even if he “did but dream” – he is not beyond fear,
compared to other Shakespearean villains such as Iago, who seems to be entirely
beyond feeling fear or remorse of any kind. He tries to reason himself out of his
shock,
What? Do I fear myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.
(5.3.185-187)
Richard berates himself for the workings of what he believes to be his overactive
imagination, (“Do I fear myself/”). The ill-boding ghosts have made him feel under
immediate threat for the first time, and so he asks, “Is there a murderer here?” in order
to calm himself. But his answer is dissatisfying, because he is a murderer, and whilst
he may not pose a direct threat to himself, he cannot escape his past sins. The ghosts
make Richard recognise there is no escape from this.
My conscience have several thousand tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
(5.3.196-198)
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The gradatio here of “tongue” and “tale” suggests a building up and a breaking down,
because the imagery moves from the idea of stories to what each story is about, but
every story “condemns” Richard, widening the imagery once more. Though he sees
the ghosts as a figment of his imagination (which they cannot be because they appear
to Richmond as well), all the crimes he has committed live on in his memory. He
accepts that he has rendered himself incapable of inspiring pity or love from
humanity, and declares, “I shall despair”.
In this scene the ghosts are more powerful in terms of presence rather than
character. It is not each individual ghost that emphasises the magnitude of Richard’s
crimes so much as the amassing of all these witnesses to testify against him, with the
audience sitting in judgement. The ghost of Hamlet’s father is always a ghost on
stage, and is the only ghost on stage – he is necessary to the plot, whereas the ghosts
in Richard III, whether they are the ghosts of characters murdered during the play by
Richard or not, do not push change the plot when they are ghosts by their appearance
so much as auguring Richard’s downfall. The ghost in Hamlet not only augurs the
subsequent problems of Claudius’ kingship, but indicative of the problems already on
stage from the beginning of the play. The ghost of Hamlet’s father contributes to the
atmosphere of insecurity in the first scene. His presence implies that the cautious
attitudes of the guards are not misplaced. Horatio says, being told about the ghost,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
(1.1.69)
The ghosts are ominous, they indicate massive upheaval and change, though not
always for the worse, as Richmond’s memory of the ghosts is the, “fairest-boding
dreams”. Richard’s behaviour has gone too far and now his past actions have come
back to haunt him; he is doomed to fail at Bosworth. So much profound evil has been
committed that it has caused the supernatural to intervene. Similarly, the profundity
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of Claudius’ crime seems to have put affected absolutely everything.
The time is out of joint: o cursed sprite
That ever I was born to set it right.
(1.5.189-190)
But this is only Hamlet’s perception of the ghost’s instruction. The ghost tells Hamlet
to kill Claudius, but Hamlet reacts as though he has to save the world, as though “The
time is out of joint”, rather than Claudius’ status. He expands the experience of
meeting the ghost to mean that everything is disordered, projecting his own emotions
on to everything else.
Hamlet increasingly projects his emotions on to other characters, and expects
them to feel in ways that he finds acceptable, which is intrinsically linked to the
question of whether the ghost always exists in Hamlet, or if it is just a figment of his
imagination. This is never an issue in Richard III because the ghosts appear in
dreams and also the ghosts appear to both Richard and Richmond. However, after
Act 1, Scene 5 the ghost is only ever seen or heard by Hamlet. Gertrude tells Hamlet,
when the ghost shows up in the Closet Scene,
The very coinage of your brain
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
(3.4.137-139)
At the end of Act 1, Scene 5, Hamlet tries to cover up the speech of the ghost when
Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio find him, and yet here only Hamlet can see the
ghost, and the ghost only reminds him of his purpose – he learns no new information.
In Richard Eyre’s production of Hamlet in 1982, Hamlet spoke all the ghost’s lines,
completely internalising Hamlet’s experience with the ghost, suggesting that the ghost
was intrinsically linked to Hamlet’s perception of everything, and subject to it to some
extent. Although the ghost is meant to appear on stage, there is an increasing sense
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within the play, that Hamlet is taking over, rather than being influenced by the ghost.
He wants to control the emotions of other characters, using the play to trap Claudius,
to get a guilty rise out of him, and berating Gertrude for not blushing with shame
when Hamlet accuses her of adultery and knowledge of his father’s murder. His
confusing reaction to Laertes’ grief is another example of this,
What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis?
(5.1.221-222)
Laertes’ demonstration of grief is too overblown for Hamlet’s liking. He accuses
Laertes of behaving in this fashion to “outface” him, rather than seeing it as an open
gesture of the love Laertes bears Ophelia. Whilst it does feel as though Laertes is
putting on a show of his grief, which perhaps is not equal to the emotion he feels,
Hamlet reacts to his behaviour like a rival, as though the purpose of Laertes’ grief is
to show up Hamlet’s previous treatment of Ophelia. Similarly, in having the ghost
interject his meeting with his mother, it puts Hamlet back on track, reminding him
that in confronting his mother, and letting Claudius live he is doing the exact opposite
of what the ghost specified in Act 1 Scene 5. Hamlet’s actions are almost always
reactions to the behaviour of other characters, which he increasingly tries to control,
but as Hamlet is unsure of what is actually right, he measures himself by the ghost,
after its appearance in Act 3, Scene 4.
In Richard III the ghosts appear in order to encourage despair in Richard and
victory in Richmond – to ensure that good wins out. Likewise the ghost of Hamlet’s
father appears in order to try and right the wrong that was visited upon him by
Claudius. The ghosts at least seem to attempt to bring to light the truth. They are, to
some extent, emblematic of a basic human desire to find some kind of unshakeable
truth, which exists in most characters, or at least the general belief that we should are
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not meant not ignore the truth, that actuality is too powerful to be ignored. Yet there
is a degree of dramatic irony in this. Firstly, the use of the word “shadow” for ghost,
as aside from its current meaning, at the time of Shakespeare it could also be used to
refer to actors. After Richard sees the ghosts, he has this exchange with Ratcliffe,
Ratcliffe: …be not afraid of shadows.
Richard: By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard… (5.3.216-218)
The “shadows” are both ghosts in the reality of the play, and actors in actuality.
When Ratcliffe says shadows it sounds as though he means illusions, almost
something that isn’t tangible, but these illusions have managed to touch Richard more
deeply than anything else in the play. This theme, that illusions and thoughts can taint
the mind crops up in Hamlet as well, when Hamlet is talking to Rosencrantz and
Guildensterne in Act 2, Scene 2.
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count
myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
(2.2.243-244)
It is Hamlet’s “bad dreams” that trap him, because he might as well “be bounded in a
nutshell” with his thoughts tormenting him. Just as Richard’s conscience has “several
thousand tongue” that tell him he has sinned, so Hamlet has too many “bad dreams”
haunting him. Rosencrantz goes on to say “the very substance of ambition is merely
the shadow of a dream”, which is insightful in two plays where the plots are driven by
ambition – it is Richard’s greed and pride that leads him to murder his way to the
throne and Claudius’s covetous greed of Hamlet’s father’s wife and crown that leads
him to kill his brother. Ambition is the act of a dream, and in our ambitions we put on
a performance, we act in order to achieve ambitions. Richard plays any part he has to
adopt to coerce other characters; likewise Claudius acts the part of a lawful monarch,
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and Hamlet the part of a madman to ascertain Claudius’ guilt. Furthermore, the
ghosts of both plays incite the protagonists to sin, which raises the question of
whether or not the ghosts are good. The ghosts in Richard III say that there are
“Good Angels” and “God” on the side of Richmond, and presumably on their side
too, but Hamlet’s father is spends his days suffering hellish torments, which are
apparently so awful he cannot articulate them. The ghosts seem to want the truth to
be revealed, or for those who mistreated them to receive their punishment, and yet
they are traditionally aligned with the devil and hell. But then, as Hamlet says,
…there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.(2.2.240)
What Hamlet is talking about here is relativism; Rosencrantz may not mind Elsinore
but that is his response to it, for Hamlet it is as bad a trap as the “nutshell” of his
thoughts. But the phrase is a resounding one; whenever Richard tries to manipulate
another character it boils down to this idea – life is simply how you perceive it, which
is why he sees characters as interchangeable, and believes he can usurp whomever he
likes. The question of what is good and bad is not ever entirely clear in Hamlet, for
example, as soon as Claudius has confessed his crime fully to the audience, he prays
for forgiveness and Hamlet decides not to kill him because he wants to ensure that
Claudius is damned to perdition. The ghost embodies this confusion of morals on
some level, because it is so difficult for Hamlet to reason whether or not the ghost is
good, and whether or not he should kill Claudius. In contrast, the ghosts in Richard
III have no grey areas; Richard must be defeated because he has committed too many
sins.
The ghosts in both plays augur social upheaval, but their purposes within each
play are distinctly different. The ghosts in Richard III refuse to let Richard escape his
crimes (though this is similar to the ghost of Hamlet’s father), or let his belief that
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characters are interchangeable go unchallenged. Richard III’s encounter with the
ghosts forces him to recognise his own downfall and his situation, whereas Hamlet’s
reaction to the ghost is one of confusion – in fact the existence of the ghost for Hamlet
seems to expand on to life in general, as he begins to project that experience onto
everything. In both plays the ghosts invite the audience, and other characters, to
examine actuality, but in Richard III they force Richard to examine his past, whilst in
Hamlet, the ghost leads Hamlet to question every aspect of his life, most of all those
parts he believed unshakeable.