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Hamlet - familiar relations - Coggle Diagram
Hamlet - familiar relations
“I am thy father’s spirit”
In this initial interaction when Hamlet is introduced to the ghost, we enter this concentrated father-son moment of familial mentorship
Using the simple sentence beginning this mini monologue, the ghost appears to immediately establish authority
WW Greg said: “It is tempting to advance a step further, and to argue that Shakespeare not only constructed his play on the basis of a hallucination on the part of his hero, but that he intended the Ghost to be an illusion throughout.
“Confined to fast in fires”
Semantic field of “confined” , “fast” , “for” , “fires”, “foul” and “father” demonstrate fricative alliteration often utilised by Shakespeare with the harsh ‘f’ sound used to convey a breathy, physical sound which we may juxtapose with the beyond-physical nature of the ghost as a “spirit”
This raises a challenge for the Catholic members of the audience seeing as the ghost enters the scene seeking revenge; how is it that the alleged soul of the king had been purified if there is such evil surrounding him?
Yet some might argue that this desire for revenge serves as a traditional element of a Shakespearian revenge tragedy inspired by Senecan revenge plays
“O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell?”
Repetitive questions directed at the ghost clarify Hamlet’s obfuscation about the origin of this spirit to which case the audience may not reflect as they would automatically apply their religious bias onto their understanding of afterlife
There is ambiguity in Hamlet himself as he appears to question throughout the scene where the ghost resides; heaven, hell or purgatory
“ host of heaven” + “Oh, earth” + “shall I couple hell” + “purged away”
The word ‘purge’ has the same Latin origin as purgatory which means ‘to cleanse’ = links to Purgatory being a place of rebirth or purification
Indicates the possibility of Purgatory(proper noun) as it is in accordance with the religion of the Catholic Church
A ‘cleansing fire’ is referred to by the Catholics to be used in Purgatory for purification of the ‘elected’ yet this belief is denied by the Protestants
At the time there were anti-Catholic plots such as the Babington Plot aiming to kill Elizabeth to be replaced by the Catholic Mary of Scots. And so the Catholics were present yet as a minority however with significant and extreme influence while the majority of England was Protestant.
Therefore some members of the audience would have interpreted it in various ways in accordance with their beliefs.
“So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.”
The critic Northrop Frye asked: “If purgatory is a place of purification, why does the Ghost come from it shrieking for revenge? Why does purgatory, as the ghost describes it, sound so much as if it were hell?”