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At its worst, Halloween can become a dangerous dalliance with the demonic or a morbid manifestation of the macabre. At its best, it’s a fun trick-or-treating time for families to meet their neighbors for an evening candy-fest. Either way, it’s a time when people tend to think about the supernatural, for better or worse. At this time of year, therefore, it might be good to speak of the spooks that haunt the works of Shakespeare.
There are two types of spooks who make an appearance in Shakespeare’s plays. There are ghosts, who are sometimes good and even holy, and there are demons, who are out to work their wickedness on wayward souls.
(View the Photo Gallery at the end of this article to see “Ghosts, ghouls, and demons in Shakespeare.”)
A ghost from purgatory
The most famous of Shakespeare’s holy spirits is the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, who is revealed as a Catholic in his description of his own death. He is murdered, cut off in the blossoms of his sin, “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled” with all his imperfections on his head. The archaisms, unhouseled, disappointed and unaneled, refer to the Catholic sacraments of Communion, Penance (Confession) and Extreme Unction (the Last Rites), all of which were snatched away from him by his sudden death. It is for these unabsolved sins that he is being punished in purgatory:
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.
The Ghost is, therefore, “a spirit of health” and “an honest ghost” destined for Heaven once his sins are purged, and not a “goblin damned” as Hamlet had initially feared. He is also a minister of justice, who exposes the treacherous and murderous crime of King Claudius.
Haunted by conscience
Whereas the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father is shown to be real because he is seen by several independent witnesses simultaneously, other ghosts in Shakespeare’s works might possibly be figments of the imagination, mere hallucinations, because they are only seen by one person and are not visible to others. The Ghost of Julius Caesar appears to Brutus, the trusted friend who had betrayed him, declaring himself to be Brutus’ “evil spirit”. Perhaps he is really Caesar’s ghost, or perhaps he is the evil spirit of Brutus’ tortured conscience playing tricks on him.
Brutus is clearly haunted by Caesar’s ghost or by the memory of his own ghastly sins as he discovers the bodies of Cassius and Titinius, both of whom had committed suicide. “O Julius Caesar,” he exclaims, “thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords in our own proper entrails.”
“The ghost of Caesar hath appear’d to me,” Brutus tells Volumnius. “I know my hour is come.” It’s as though the apparition of Caesar’s ghost serves as a harbinger of Brutus’ own doom, driving him also to commit suicide in an act which he hopes will allow Caesar’s spirit to rest in peace. “Caesar, now be still,” he says as he prepares to run on his own sword. “I kill’d not thee with half so good a will.”
“The very painting of your fear”
If Brutus is haunted by either the ghost of Caesar or by his own guilty conscience, the same could be said of Macbeth. Having ordered the murder of his friend Banquo, Macbeth is seated at table with many others when Banquo’s ghost appears to him. Nobody else can see it and Lady Macbeth tells her husband that he is merely imagining things. “This is the very painting of your fear,” she says.
“Why do you make such faces?” she asks Macbeth as he stares in horror at the empty seat. “When all’s done, you look but on a stool.” Irritated at what she sees as his cowardice, she asks him why he is “quite unmann’d in folly”. Even Macbeth wonders whether what he is seeing is real or merely his tortured conscience conjuring up imaginary spirits. “Hence, horrible shadow!” he shouts at the apparition. “Unreal mock’ry, hence!”
Three demonic witches
Whether or not Banquo’s ghost is real, there is no doubting the reality of the demonic Three Witches. They discourse amongst themselves, requiring no mortal to give them being or conjure them into existence. They have supernatural powers, indicating that they are preternatural, not human; they are ghouls, not ghosts. They are seen by both Macbeth and Banquo simultaneously, both of whom can hear what the witches say to them. They are real, not imaginary. They are demonic, dangerous and deadly.
The witches in Macbeth teach us to beware of the wickedness and snares of the devil and to call on God and his saints and angels to protect us from his power.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, oh prince of the heavenly host, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
And today we celebrate...