845, 852 Cooke (ms. notes in ed. 1782): “The Ghosts Voice should be distinctly heard, but so contrived as to sound neither above nor below the persons on the stage — It is ludicrously absurd to imagine, because he generally descends through a trap door, he should speak as if pent up in the Earth. Going off at the Entrance is much to be prefered.”

845 Marshall (1875, p. 22): “I cannot agree with Coleridge that the subterranean speeches of the ghost ‘are nearly indefensible;’ they seem to me to be absolutely necessary, in order to bring out that feverish anxiety to conceal from all others the solemn revelation which he has received; an anxiety which induces Hamlet to hurry Horatio and Marcellus away from each spot whence * the voice seems to come, forgetting that he alone can hear it; and gives him time for maturing hastily, but effectually, that scheme, by which alone he perceives that he can preserve his freedom of action, and give to his over-taxed mind that relief which is absolutely necessary, if it is not utterly to lose its balance.”

845 Marshall (1875, p. 185) believes that “this scene would gain in solemnity if the voice of the Ghost were supposed to be heard by Hamlet alone.” Marshall (p, 184) supports his position by arguing that in all other scenes, Hamlet is the only one who hears the ghost.

845 Coleridge (apud Furness, ed. 1877): “These subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible; but I would call your attention to the characteristic difference between the Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed religion,—and Shakespeare’s consequent reverence in his treatment of it,—and the foul, earthy witcheries and wild language in Macbeth.”

845-78 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “The Ghost’s interference heightens Hamlet’s agitation. If he does not talk, laugh, jest, it will overcome him. Also he must not show that he believes it is his father’s ghost: that must be kept to himself—for the present at least. He shows it therefore no respect—treats the whole thing humourously, so avoiding, or at least parrying question. It is all he can do to keep the mastery of himself, dodging horror with half-forced, half-hysterical laughter. Yet is he all the time intellectually on the alert. See how, instantly active, he makes use of the voice from beneath to enforce his requisition of silence. Very speedily he grows quiet: a glimmer of light as to the course of action necessary to him has begun to break upon him: it breaks from his own wild and disjointed behaviour in the attempt to hide the conflict of his feelings—which suggests to him the idea of shrouding himself, as did David at the court of the Philistines, in the cloak of madness: thereby protected from the full force of what suspicion any absorption of manner or outburst of feeling must occasion, he may win time to lay his plans. Note how, in the midst of his horror, he is yet able to think, plan, resolve.”

845, 852, 858 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “What idea is involved as the cause of the Ghost’s thus interfering?—That he too sees what difficulties must encompass the carrying out of his behest, and what absolute secrecy is thereto essential.”

845 Ghost . . . Stage] Deighton (ed. 1891, p. xi): “As he is administering the oath, the voice of the Ghost is heard beneath the ground enforcing obedience to obey Hamlet’s injunction.”

845 Ghost cries vnder the Stage] Trench (1913, p. 73) wonders what the dramatic purpose might be of having the ghost cry under the stage: “If Shakespeare did not expect (rightly or wrongly) that a weird effect could be thus produced, the incident has no meaning at all.”

845-79 Greg (MLR 12 [1917]: 415, 417-19): it’s possible that only Hamlet hears the ghost, but whether he does or not his behavior is strange. Perhaps he hears the waves dashing on the shores. On pp. 417-19, Greg discusses the closet scene (3.4). This visitation is more clearly an hallucination because Gertrude does not see or hear the ghost. Ed. note: Here’s where Wilson (1918) rightly accuses Greg of forgetting that the work is not a history but a play.

845-60 Wilson (1935, pp. 78, 81) <p. 78> accounts for Ham.’s behavior by his need for secrecy, </ p. 78> < p. 81> and he credits the ghost with giving Hamlet the idea of making the others swear, as if by the devil. He refers to Lavater (p. 73, p. 191 in Wilson’s ed.) who cites spirits in mines. </p. 81>

845 Beckerman (1962, p. 202): Since the ghost cries under the stage, W. J. Lawrence thought that he had exited in 776 through the trap, but since the ghost is silent for some 57 lines and since, as John Cranford Adams has shown, the use of the trap would have had to be accompanied by a clap of thunder to mask the trap mechanism, it is more likely that the ghost exited through a door, as he had entered [see 51], and that he moves under the stage to continue the scene.

845 Sweare] Spencer (ed. 1980): “The Ghost’s insistence on, or approval of, the oath upon the hilt of the sword as a Cross and its response to the appeals to God’s mercy in lines 169 and 180 are further evidence that it is not a diabolical tempter. Presumably Hamlet’s mockery of the Ghost is intended to conceal from Horatio and Marcellus how seriously he takes it and its revelations.”

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.”

845-78 Kline (1990) in his film has the ghost moving away from the men and Hamlet, with the others following his lead, rushing towards it.

845 vnder the Stage] Dessen & Thomson(1999): “the usual theatrical term for the space below/beneath the main platform . . . . sometimes [as in Ham.] the space has supernatural or underworld connotations [quotes Q2 Ham.]. . . . ”

845 vnder the Stage] Thompson & Taylor (ed. 2006): “In the Elizabethan theatre the space under the stage was associated with hell, as for example in the dumb-show before Act 4 of Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc (1561): ’there came from under the stage, as though out of hell, three furies.’ There are several references in plays of the period to properties or characters ascending or descending through a trapdoor and to noises emanating from below (see Dessen & Thomson, ’under the stage’), though the only other example of Shakespeare’s use of the latter effect is the SD ’Music of the Hoboys is under the Stage’ for the unearthly music signifying Hercules’ desertion of Antony at Ant. 4.3.12 . It turned out, however, not to be practicable to have the Ghost speak from under the stage at the London Globe in 2000: the actor could not be heard by the audience; nor could he hear his cues. Wherever the voice comes from, the Ghost seems to add to or even participate in Hamlet’s wildness (see [795 CN]).”

845-79 Ghost cries . . . perturbed spirit] de Grazia (2007, p. 41), assuming that the ghost follows the men, points out that since theatrically the space under the stage belonged to devils it puts the ghost “into the ranks of the damned and diabolic. It is for this reason, it appears, that the swearing ceremony over the cross of the sword cannot proceed. Two forces are in conflict. While the cross-like sword sanctifies the spot, the Ghost’s presence beneath hexes it.”