845 Ghost . . . Stage]
Jenkins (ed. 1982): “This episode of the ghostly voice when the Ghost has gone has often been found puzzling. What is puzzling, I take it, after the appalling clarity of the Ghost’s own narrative, is the impression now given of something happening beyond what is or can be explained (and the dramatic purpose of this). An eerie aftermath (cf. 861) prolongs the awful effect of the apparition even while
Hamlet’s jocularity, after the solemnity of the actual encounter, gives more than a touch of burlesque; and this ’comic relief’ (for in the strictest sense it is that) has, in a manner characteristically Shakespearean, serious and even sinister overtones. The situation and dialogue are pertinently matter-of-fact, and yet have an aura of diabolism. We shall have accepted, along with
Hamlet (831), the Ghost’s account of its purgatory, and its presence down below will s to accord with this. But ’under the stage’ is the traditional theatrical location of hell, with possibilities of a kind mocking suggested in Dekker’s
News from Hell, ’Hell being under every one of their stages, the players . . . might with a false trap-door have slipped [the devil] down, and there kept him, as a laughing-stock to all their yawning spectators’ (
Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Grosart, 2: 92). The shifting locality of the voice adds to the impression of a subterranean demon. The familiarity with which
Hamlet addresses it may recall the manner in which the stage Vice traditionally addressed the Devil. With the disarming
truepenny (846-7) cf. Miles in
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay calling his devil ’a plain, honest man’. The Latin tag
Hic et ubique (853), while literally apt, sounds like a conjuration formula, and, as Coghill has pointed out (pp. 10-11), it is only God and the devil that could be ’here and everywhere’ at once. (Cf.
TN 5.1.219-20.) It is perhaps not necessary to suppose that
old mole (859), pertinent a nickname here, was actually a sobriquet of the devil, as has been contended but hardly demonstrated (see Coghill, loc. cit.; N&Q, 215: 128-9; 216:, 145-6;
ELN, 12: 163-8), ), but to ’work i’th’ earth’ like a ’pioner’ was the trick of underground spirits, who in popular belief often assumed the shape of miners. Lavater records how ’pioners or diggers for metal’ affirm themselves often to be joined by spirits ’apparelled like unto other labourers in the pit’, who ’wander up and down in caves and underminings, and seem to bestir themselves in all kinds of labour (1: xvi). Reginald Scot (
Discovery of Witchcraft, ’Discourse upon Devils’, ch. 3) refers to alleged attacks by devils upon ’miners or pioners, which use to work in deep and dark holes under the earth’. (Cf. also Taillepied, ch. 13.) Cf. the saying, ’Like will to like, quoth the devil to the collier’; and
TN 3.2.112, where Satan is called ’foul collier’. Yet a ’pioner’ need be no more than a ’fellow in the cellarage’. Whether
Hamlet believes, or affects believe, that he is talking to a devil is perhaps too rational a question. We shall hardly accept Dover Wilson’s theory that he is making a calculated attempt to deceive Marcellus into supposing that the Ghost is indeed a devil (WHH, p. 80). It is a principle often neglected in criticism that the dramatist’s purposes in his dialogue are not necessarily those of his characters. So the diabolic-seeming voice and
Hamlet’s ’half-hysterical jesting’ (Dowden) may effectually leave still open the question of the Ghost’s true nature, and even prepare for 1638 (’The spirit that I have seen May be a devil’), but must not lead us to infer, with Dover Wilson (WHH, p.83) and Coghill (pp. 13-14), that
Hamlet himself at the present moment has doubts of the Ghost’s story. Such a view would conflict with his assertion of the Ghost’s honesty, his welcoming its collaboration in the swearing ritual, and with 879, 885-6.”