In film adaptations of Hamlet directors shorten speeches, give new substance to the original characters, and refashion genres, but they are most wary of changing Shakespeare’s words. Each of the directors tries to create uncommon visual and sound styles to give a powerful rendition of the Ghost. My aim is to show how the Ghost’s transformation is effected visually through seven notable Hamlet films directed by Laurence Olivier, Tony Richardson, Grigori Kozintsev, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Almereyda, and Campbell Scott.
The Ghost, the figure of the former king, is the most effective Shakespearean character, for he plays a central role in the first act and his speeches propel action. Many textual critics have put the ghost’s provenance and authenticity in question. In film versions, however, each director transforms the “questionable” shape of the Ghost to concrete visual image undeniably present without posing an epistemological dilemma for the audience.
In textual criticism the problem of the Ghost’s authenticity(whether the Ghost is a “spirit of health or goblin damn’d”) has been connected to Hamlet’s own dilemma. And moreover, while urging to take revenge for his unnatural death and to cleanse the royal bed of incest, the Ghost expressly admonishes Hamlet not to taint his mind and not to contrive in any way against his mother. Thus the contradictory nature of the Ghost’s injunctions has been regarded as another motivating factor of Hamlet’s delay of revenge as well. But film directors do not take pains to visualize the source of Hamlet’s turmoil which is, in most cases, caused by a rational solution(the veracity of the Ghost) or a moral solution(the propriety of revenge). The Ghost in the cinema dominates his son, who occupies a position of submission to see the Ghost’s words in his mind’s eye. Hamlet films mostly give rise to questions of paternity, for the Ghost, who haunts Hamlet’s psyche and controls him as well.
Film directors, who pay no heed to the Ghost’s authenticity or credibility, show a disposition to represent the poisoning in Act III scene ii not for evidentiary reasons to test the authenticity of the Ghost but for a re-enactment of the Ghost’s story. Hamlet seems to put on “The Mousetrap” to seek independent verification of Claudius’s guilt on the basis of the Ghost’s revelation. And in contrast to a single level of perceptible reality in theatre stage film directors make efforts to create the different visions of the Ghost’s presence through the eyes of Hamlet and his mother in the scene of Gertrude’s chamber.
At the close of the film directors have an inclination to present Hamlet who would like to tell his own story but like the Ghost lacks time, or who has been released through death from the burden of the Ghost. Each director, indulging in ‘ghostings’ of Shakespearean traditions, tries to bring Shakespeare to large contemporary cinema audiences in exciting and innovative ways. Tropically the Ghost is a metonymy for the cultural heritage of Shakespeare.