literature, education, and early modern drama // the words, words, words of Dr James Alsop, Teacher of English // views are my own and do not represent those of my employer
This chapter is part literature review, part mission statement: in it, I outline how the notion of a "ghost" would have been understood by somebody living at the turn of the 17th Century. What - or who - *were* ghosts? What did they look like? Where did they come from? Most importantly, I begin to explore how might the various historical, religious, and political significations of the ghost may have influenced the characters we see on the early modern stage...
In this paper, I argue that throughout Antonio's Revenge Marston establishes a clear relationship between the appearances of ghostly characters and glaring shifts in his play’s tonal register. Specifically, ghosts – primarily the recurring figure of Andrugio – appear to both signpost and facilitate a gloriously self-aware metatheatrical undercurrent designed to entertain and emotionally unsettle the audience in equal measure.
Few plays explore the rich dramatic potential of living death as explicitly as Thomas Middleton’s The Lady's Tragedy (or, The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, as the play is sometimes known), a tragedy that in the first three acts alone presents suicide, grave-robbing, defiled corpses, and ghosts. Middleton did *not* do these things by halves.
For a Senecan-styled tragedy of inordinate bloodshed, things work out remarkably well for the characters who survive John Marston’s 1602 Antonio’s Revenge...
Does Branagh's "Hamlet" offer audiences the most complete and compelling version of the Ghost to be put to film. I think so.
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