Short paragraph Answer Question: Consider the way death affects the way people view the value and meaning of life. In Shakespeare's time, most people were Christians and believed that souls with unfinished business went to
purgatory. To what extent can our spiritual or supernatural beliefs influence our choices? Is Hamlet going crazy
with grief and seeing his father that is not there, or is there something truly supernatural at work? Use
examples from Act 1-2 of Hamlet to back up your answer.

The earliest Shakespeare play in which ghosts appear is Richard III. Asleep in his tent before the Battle of Bosworth, Richard is visited by the spirits of his victims, one after another. Each one in turn recalls his or her fate at Richard’s hand, predicts their killer’s defeat in the forthcoming battle, and ends by telling him to ‘Despair and die’ (5.3.126). Each one of them also speaks to the sleeping Earl of Richmond, leader of the army opposing Richard, and tells him to ‘Live and flourish’ (5.3.131). Richard sleeps through all this, and any theatre audience can take it that the ghosts are in his troubled dreams. He wakes to say, ‘I did but dream. / O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!’ (5.3.178–79)Yet we cannot simply turn these ghosts into figments of the tyrant’s tormented psyche. In Richmond’s camp we find the opposing leader talking of having had the ‘fairest-boding dreams / That ever ent’red in a drowsy head’ (5.3.227–28). He tells his attendant lords that ‘souls whose bodies Richard murther’d / Came to my tent and cried on victory’ (5.3.230–31), seemingly confirming the events of the night. And the ghosts have certainly appeared on the stage and spoken. The actors probably – on the day-lit stage of the Globe – had their skin whitened with flour. In Shakespeare’s source story in Holinshed’s Chronicles, Richard is said to have had a terrible dream of ‘images like terrible devils’ on the night before the battle, but there is no mention of ghosts. This parade of the dead come back to life is entirely Shakespeare’s creation.

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