Shakespeare's Ghosts

Along with gods, witches, spirits and fairies, ghosts appear throughout Shakespeare’s plays. But who are Shakespeare’s ghosts, where do they appear, and how might they have been originally staged?

With origins in the bloody Roman revenge plays, ghosts in Elizabethan theatre were often used as justification for a character’s decision to seek vengeance, telling them truths from beyond the grave, or acting as harbingers of doom.

Ghosts appear sparingly in Shakespeare’s works - characters named 'ghost' only appear in five of his plays - but often to great effect. From the gory and silent, to the bone-chilling figures of menace, their creator clearly understood the impact a terrifying spectre could have on a rapt audience.

But Shakespeare’s ghosts often go a step further, reflecting a character’s inner turmoil. They can represent the hallucinations of a guilty mind foreshadowing their descent into madness, voice an internal desire for bloody revenge or play out the haunted nightmares of murderers.

The beauty of Shakespeare’s ghosts is that we’re never completely clear as to whether the ghosts are ‘real’ or not, leaving the audience with a creeping feeling of uncertainty, as all the best ghost stories do.

The Ghost of the old King Hamlet appears with long white hair and ragged white trousers at night to Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus.
The ghost of Hamlet's father (Greg Hicks) appears to Hamlet (Toby Stephens) in Michael Boyd's 2004 production of Hamlet.
Photo by Manuel Harlan © RSC Browse and license our images

Staging a ghost

Elizabethan theatremakers would have used a number of techniques to put their spectres on the stage. Shakespeare’s stage directions and lines from the plays also help us understand how some of his ghosts might have been performed.

  • Makeup If ghosts had to appear covered in blood (such as Banquo in Macbeth), actors would have used pigs’ blood, giving a realistic bloody look in terms of colour, viscosity and even smell. Actors may have also used flour to give their skin a deathly pale pallor and to distinguish them from their living counterparts. 
  • Staging Trapdoors would have been used for the ghosts to exit and enter scenes, with the trap being referred to as ‘hell’. Actors would have also spoken from from under the stage, such as Hamlet father's ghost, who we are told in the stage directions speaks the line "Swear" from [Beneath].
  • Special effects Smoke and firecrackers would have been used to create a sense of the otherworldly. Meanwhile, thunder would have been simulated by shaking a large sheet of metal or rolling a cannonball down a chute called a thunder run, adding to the generally creepy atmosphere.
  • Music Much like in a modern horror movie, music would have been used to emphasise a ghost’s entrance or exit, or to transport the audience to another realm.
The ghost of Banquo (Anna Russell-Martin) turns up uninvited in Wils Wilson's 2023 production of Macbeth.
Photo by Marc Brenner © RSC Browse and license our images

SHAKESPEARE'S GHOSTS

Characters named 'ghost' appear in only five of Shakespeare's plays, with the total 'ghost count' numbering 18 (though this is mainly down to the ghostly parade of Richard III's eleven victims). Discover more about Shakespeare's ghosts below:

  • Parade of Victims – Richard III

  • Caesar’s Ghost – Julius Caesar

  • The Ghost – Hamlet

  • Banquo’s Ghost – Macbeth

  • Posthumus’ Family – Cymbeline

OTHER NOTABLE SPIRITS

While the ghosts above are the only characters named 'ghost' in the texts of Shakespeare's plays, there are other spirits, apparitions and other undead presences which have similarly ghostly or prophetic qualities, including:

  • The fortune-telling spirit from Henry VI, Part II - the conjurer John Bolingbroke and the witch Margery Jourdain bring forth this nameless spirit to answer three questions the Duchess of Gloucester has about her future.
  • The three apparitions from Macbeth - in answer to Macbeth's questions about his future, the three witches conjure an armed head, a bloody child and a crowned child with a tree in his hand. Sometimes these are shown as objects, while other times they are played by characters in the play (such as Macduff's murdered children).
  • John Gower from Pericles - in this late romance, the medieval poet acts as narrator, having written the definitive Pericles story in the English language at the time Shakespeare and George Wilkins were writing. Having died in 1408, technically he'd have been a ghost even in 1609, though he doesn't exactly add to the spooky factor.

Who is your favourite Shakespearean ghost, ghoul, spectre or spirit?

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