Lit201 - week 8 - lect 1

[PAUL CANTOR]

Hamlet's concern for the salvation of his soul makes him more thoughtful and hesitant than a classical hero.


Act 1 - Scene 4

His shape is questionable - which raises doubts about this ghost and thus doubts about what he is going to say. These doubts haunt Hamlet.

The line is ironic, the ghost suggests that he should avenge him, and the problem is that he may well be damning himself, the soul of the ghost itself is ambiguous itself, he doesn't know if it's in hell or heaven but he thinks it's in purgatory.
For Hamlet the fact that horizons open up into eternity, "what can it do to that, being a thing immortal as itself?" So the ghost can't kill me because I have an immortal soul. (p.30). The task that the ghost gives him raises a moral problem, because Hamlet wants moral certitude, because killing the kings has implications for his own eternal destiny. So the immortality of the soul is precisely the thing that sets the problem facing Hamlet apart from the classical heroes whom he is being contrasted with throughout the work.

Remember he says himself that he is not like Hercules.

The fact that it's a middle state in which the ghost finds himself (as we are told by the ghost) even though he explains it that he is allowed to come back and seek revenge, the fact that it's middle makes it ambiguous. Page 30, Ghost's speech, is basically saying that if he could tell us about purgatory he would, but it's horrible. And again this opens up the idea that the ghost can't tell Hamlet everything, thus, can he be trusted?

Thus things have become morally ambiguous and we question the ghost.