Overview

In my term project, I continued my research on ghosts. I focused mainly on Shakespeare’s plays dealing with ghosts. I also looked at pictures dealing with deaths and what I thought to be a close resemblance of what I thought could be purgatory. There was also a pamphlet that dealt with ghosts that grabbed my attention along with a play by John Fletcher that used ghosts as a comedic relief.
The three plays that I dealt with dealing with ghosts by Shakespeare were Richard III, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. In each play, these ghosts were ghosts of murdered victims of the main character. The ghosts came back to haunt the characters and to curse them. Each of the people visited by ghosts died in the end as the appearance of the ghosts leads the downfall of the character. Each ghosts brought guilt to the main character. In Richard III, even though the ghost appearance came at the end, the ghosts showed Richard III how lonely he is and how much he hates himself. In Julius Caesar, Brutus realizes that killing Caesar maybe wasn’t the best choice especially using the excuse that murdering Caesar would benefit Rome. Macbeth’s madness begins to show once he sees Banquo’s ghosts. Guilt kicks in and things begin to plunge for Macbeth. Having similar traits of the ghosts showed how big of a role ghosts played during Shakespeare time. Ghosts were used to get revenge and to bring guilt upon the murderer.
To continue on my research, I came across Hans Holbein’s artwork. It was called the Dance of Death. I found it interesting how the dead were depicted as skeletons. I explored around and found pictures dealing with the supernatural and thought it would be interesting to comment upon, as many were a little hard to understand.
I also looked at a pamphlet dealing with ghosts and haunting. I picked the one I did because of the skeleton cover. It matched the pictures from Holbein’s Dance of Death. The two stories that I read were about ghost hauntings but what I found interesting was how in both stories, ghosts caused physical pain to the living. I compared the stories to that of Shakespeare’s ghosts and found that Shakespeare’s ghost did not physically harm any of the ghosts’ victims. Yes they messed with the minds but didn’t actually hurt or pushed any of the victims.
Reading about ghosts becomes depressing after awhile so I decided to read a comedy where ghosts were used for personal gain. In The Night Walker by John Fletcher, the living pretended to be ghosts to scare people away. I guess during this time it is easy to scare, as people are very superstitious. Though the play wasn’t based on ghosts alone and the ghosts didn’t play such a major role like in Shakespeare play, it was nice to see how an author during this time made fun of people’s superstitious minds and quickly believed in ghosts and not question if it was a ghosts or not.
Through my research, I found that ghosts are used to bring guilt on a character. The ghosts are used against sinners and usually come back for revenge. There was a fascination on ghosts during the Renaissance period. Though ghosts most appeared to those who are depressed and not in the right state of minds, the people during the Renaissance age used ghosts to tell moral stories. Most of them told people to not kill or you’ll be visited by the spirit of your victim and will most likely die in the end. The afterlife will always be a mystery to us and seeing how ghosts is a fixture in tradition and culture, reading stories and looking at pictures dealing with death made me want to look more into the history of the afterlife. No one knows exactly what happens to us after we die. We do not know if there really are such things as ghosts or even purgatory but I do know that we will always be fascinated by different ideas of what happens to us after we die.




Bibliography

Fletcher, John, and Francis Beaumont. The Night Walker. Ed. Fredson Bowes. The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Vol. VII. New York, NY: Press Syndicate of
the University of Cambridge, 1989. 532-611.

Shakespeare, William, Harold Bloom, and Burton Raffel. Julius Caesar. New York: Yale UP, 2006.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. Nick De Somogyi. New York: Nick Hern Books, Limited, 2004.

Shakespeare, William, and Harold Bloom. Richard III. Ed. Burton Raffel. New York: Yale UP, 2008.

http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/macabre.htm

http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgthumbs.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=38875913&FILE=../session/1229013713_18049&SEARCHSCREEN=CITATIONS&SEARCHCONFIG=var_spell.cfg&DISPLAY=AUTHOR

Interesting sites you might want to look at:

http://shakespeare.emory.edu/illustrated_index.cfm

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

http://www.godecookery.com/macabre/holdod/holdod.htm

http://www.godecookery.com/