Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Shakespeares Hamlet - The Importance of the Ghost Essay -- GCSE Engli
Hamlet and the Non-expendable Ghost   All literary critics agree that the Ghost in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet is not an expendable character. Without the Ghost the show could not go on. He is absolutely essential to the plot, to ever aspect of the drama.  W.H. Clemen in â€Å"Imagery in Hamlet Reveals Character and Theme†describes the pervasive influence which the Ghost’s words have on the entire play:  Perusing the description which the ghost of Hamlet’s father gives of his poisoning by Claudius (I,v) one cannot help being struck by the vividness with which the process of poisoning, the malicious spreading of the disease, is portrayed:  Sleeping within my orchard,     My custom always of the afternoon,     Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,     With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,     And in the porches of my ears did pour     The leperous distilment; whose effect     Holds such an enmity with blood of man     That swift as quicksilver it courses through     The natural gates and alleys of the body,     And with a sudden vigour doth posset     And curd, like eager droppings into milk,     The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;     And a most instant tetter bark'd about,     Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,     All my smooth body.  A real event described at the beginning of the drama has exercised a profound influence upon the whole imagery of the play. What is later metaphor is here still reality. The picture of the leprous skin disease, which is here – in the first act – described by Hamlet’s father, has buried itself deep in Hamlet’s imagination and continues to lead its subterranean existence, as ... ...Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San 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.
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