'The ghost is a useful dramatic device but for a modern audience its effect is to diminish rather than enhance the play's impact'

... 'The ghost is a useful dramatic device but for a modern audience its effect is to diminish rather than enhance the play's impact' A ghost was a common feature in the genre of an Elizabethan revenge play of which Hamlet is a prime example. Shakespeare has endued the ghost in Hamlet with several functions, all of which are vital to the plays impact and development. However connotations of the ghost were very different for a Shakespearian audience, therefore it is possible that variation in the way in which the ghost is received may diminish the plays impact for a modern audience. In the Elizabethan period people had much stronger ties to religion than we have today. Despite being an officially protestant country, there were many who continued to practise the old faith, and who had yet to eschew the catholic idea of purgatory, where souls went to expiate their sins before

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