Is Hamlet being misled by illusions? No one wants an answer to this more than Hamlet himself: he knows that there’s a good chance that the Ghost is not truly the spirit of his father at all, but a vision sent by the devil to tempt Hamlet into committing a murder and so damning his soul to hell. He goes to elaborate lengths to attempt to verify the Ghost’s claims, using a troupe of players and his own adaptation of an old revenge tragedy to see if he can get Claudius to reveal his guilt.
But to a modern audience, even once we learn of Claudius’s irrefutable guilt, we’re still left with a problem: what is the Ghost, anyway? We don’t have any reason to believe in ghosts in current times. People enjoy ghost stories, but don’t often claim to really believe in them. But if ghosts aren’t real, then…what is, actually, happening in “Hamlet”? Is Hamlet delusional? Could he in fact be “misled by illusions” – even if his delusions turn out to predict something that is true? Is his conversation with the Ghost proof that he is in fact mad? The play refuses an easy answer.
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