What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? think of it:
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
It's easy to forget, but before it is anything, Hamlet is essentially...
a ghost story.
Think about this for a minute. We live in uncertain times to be sure--but the Elizabethan's lived slightly more in fear of there lives. Children were not baptized or named until they were toddlers because so relatively few of them lived beyond infancy into childhood. The Plague took lives at regular intervals. In fact, if you sat in a theater to watch a show, you were in a sense, defying death. The theaters were often thought of as petrie dishes for incubating plague epidemics so in the event of an outbreak the theaters were immediately closed down. (Periods of these closings are responsible for Bill's prolific outupt in other areas.)
So as you took your place amongst the audience you were aware that you could actually be there on the cusp of another outbreak--every sneeze or cough would bring this to your mind.
Add to this the political situation. For the past 70 years or so, your country has been riddled with internal strife over religion. Regardless of whether you were sympathetic with the Protestants or the Catholics, it is highly likely that you've heard of and perhaps seen many public acts of torture and execution over the matter of religion. If you held Catholic sympathies--which secretly the majority of the Groundlings did, and many in the noble classes as well--you probably feel a certain horror at the prospect of your country's soul being damned for defying the Church and for eviscerating certain sanctities performed at Mass. The very doctrines of your faith were shifting not from a legitimate theological understanding but to suit the libidinous desires of a despot King. Some of the traditions and rituals that had provided you comfort during times of fear and sickness and death, are now no longer allowed, and dangerous to practice.
And still you are worried about the state of your soul in all this, and the soul of your country.
Then you sit in a seat and a story begins. About a slain King and his Ghost, haunting the wilderness on the outside of his palace. He appears and it is full of terror and dread. The interesting thing about the quote above is that it reflects what Elizabethans believed about Ghosts.
The Catholic faith believed (and still does) in the intercession of the dead with the living. Catholics are induced to pray for the dead because Catholics believe that the interactions through the living and dead are in constant communion. So though the occurrence is not an every day one, Catholics were prepared for the possible visitation of spirits. There was an actual process by which one could be trained in "the discernment of spirits" . Now is this all making you think of Zelda Rubenstein and Poltergeist?
According to Catholic belief, It really is not far off from Speilberg's imagination in one sense, and certainly, supernatural disturbances like in Poltergeist are just an extreme example of what is happening all around in more extreme form. Spirits were things either seen or felt that could impel the Will and threaten to enslave or kill us or drive us mad. Think about that for a moment. It is not so far off now from how we understand contemporary psychology, particularly addiction and certain forms of personality disorders.
So the Ghost which appears to Hamlet in this scene, follows a chilling stage direction.
"The Ghost beckons Hamlet."
He beckons.
Horatio, the role model of a good friend, warns Hamlet that he has not properly discerned this spirit and warns him of the risk. What madness could await him? What risk to his life? Should he not perform the proper discernment before following his impulse and his Will, which may in fact at this moment not be fully his own.
Think of it. Hamlet is filled with grief over the loss of a well-loved father. Shakespeare's own father had recently died, so the language is filled with the torment and grief that comes from those haunted by loss. And he strains to follow him. I've posted the image above before--it is rather perfect actually.
