Hamlet, the Ghost, and a New Document

Shakespeare's ghost is not merely "a conventional literary figure still trailing on to the stage all the trappings of classic myth while Shakespeare gives visible form to the fears of the popular mind. In Hamlet, from the first apprehensions of the soldiers on the watch to the moment when the apparition at length breaks silence with its dreadful tale, the circumstance with which it is imagined is in accord with the progression of events" (Hamlet, ed. Jenkins 101).