Abstract
If we exclude the ghost of Agrippina in the doubtfully attributed Octavia, there are only two ghosts in Seneca’s tragedies who appear on stage: Tantalus in Thyestes and Thyestes himself in Agamemnon. Even they, however, do not enter the internal action of these plays, do not appear to the other characters. They function rather as omens or prologues, exerting from the beginning a baleful influence on what is to follow: the events which (they seem to insist) must follow. Thyestes begins with the ghost of Tantalus brought unwillingly before us from his torment in Hell.
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Notes
Quotations from Seneca are from Seneca, his Tenne Tragedies, ed. Thomas Newton (London: 1581), repr. in the Tudor Translations (London, 1927).
Quotations from The Spanish Tragedy are from Philip Edwards’ edition for the Revels Plays (London, 1959).
William Empson, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’, Nimbus, III (Summer 1956) 19.
William Empson, ‘The Spanish Tragedy’, in R. J. Kaufmann (ed.), Elizabethan Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism (New York, 1961) p. 80.
G. K. Hunter, ‘Ironies of Justice in The Spanish Tragedy’, in S. Schoenbaum (ed.), Renaissance Drama, VIII (Evanston, I11., 1965).
A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1904) p. 27.
Quotations from Antonio’s Revenge are from G. K. Hunter’s edition for the Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London, 1966).
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© 1987 Peter Mercer
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Mercer, P. (1987). The Ghost. In: Hamlet and the Acting of Revenge. Contemporary Interpretations of Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09217-8_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09217-8_2
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