"I have no doubt that demonstrating "real" coursework on Coursework.Info to my students, articulates the [coursework] requirement far better than I can."
"Spirit of health or goblin damned?" How do we understand the ghost in Act 1 Scene 5 of Hamlet?
- Words:
- 1295
- Submitted:
- Wed Jun 06 2007
- Mark submitted by Author:


... "Spirit of health or goblin damned?" How do we understand the ghost in Act 1 Scene 5 of Hamlet? From the opening scene of the play, the ghost of Hamlet the King of Denmark is a figure that is shrouded in mystery. Only appearing in the dead of night, and moving "like a guilty thing", it's intentions remain uncertain until Act 1 Scene 5. Despite giving it's reasons for it's "walking of the night", the issue of the ambiguity of the ghost continues to arise, and no question is more prominent in the minds of the audeince than it's intentions: "wicked or charitable?" Having guided the main character Hamlet away from his company of Horatio and Marcellus, Shakespeare uses hendiadys when the ghost decribes the catholic perception of hell: "sulphorous and tormenting flames". This proves to be a common feature of the ghost's idiom, and this quotation in particular solves a













