Neil Bowen on
An excerpt from the transcript from a lecture by Prof. Rhodri Lewis of Princeton University on MASSOLIT:
The word 'thing' is used in Hamlet more frequently than in, any other any other of his plays, and I think it is at the very center of what the play tries to achieve.
The most obvious, example of this, is the ghost, which when it, first appears in act one is constantly referred to as an it, which is to say an entity that appears to be exist appears to exist that we can see, we are not one that talks at this point and that will come later, but that we cannot adequately, explain.
And, I think it's an absolutely brilliant emblem that Shakespeare has seized on there to to represent her world, Hamlet's world, Shakespeare's world, that doesn't quite fit into any of these systems of, knowledge or of belief that the world has available. Take the example of ghosts. What everyone agrees, whatever they believe, whether they're Protestant, Roman Catholic, or atheistical, what they all believe is that ghosts aren't real in the sense that, you know, they're not physically there in front of you. Ghosts are real in your mind. Ghosts are spirits which could instantiate themselves in your head to make it look to you as if they're real. They get inside your imagination, which is why they can appear, in different ways to different people and why, as in the case of the the, closet scene between Hamlet and Gertrude, the ghost can appear to Hamlet but not to her. Ghosts have that power, you know.
Ghosts don't have that power, maybe if they're real, but, under the under this prevailing attitudes to the existence of ghosts in the early modern world, they were said to have that power. What is interesting though from our purposes or for our purposes is that if you're a Roman Catholic, you believe that, a ghost can really be one of three things. It's either an angel or a demon, or it's, you know, your dad or your uncle or your aunt coming back from purgatory, to, you know, beg your assistance in, you know, shortening their time there and, you know, absorbing their sins such that they can move on to the heavenly happy place.