Retribution or repayment in kind is the cornerstone of Western ideas about justice. In iron-age societies that lacked written laws, courts, and police, justice was synonymous with vengeance: families avenged offences against their members, and the cycles of offense and reprisal morphed into the great feuds that are the subject of saga and legend. Theories of just retribution and the practice of private revenge went together in Christian Europe, at odds but hand in hand, until the eighteenth century. A code of aristocratic family honor demanding vengeance lasted well into the modern period. In Elizabethan England a man was expected to retaliate swiftly for slights to himself or the abuse of his kin or dependents. As Laertes says to Claudius:

The lex talionis or the law of repayment in kind finds its classical expression in the biblical injunction:

But the Christian position on vengeance is complex, even contradictory. Even while the wrathful God of the Old Testament promises to take His revenge in Deuteronomy 32:35—"Vengeance and recompense are mine: their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their destruction is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them, make haste"— He explicitly reserves the right of vengeance to Himself. The Lord Himself forbids private revenge in Leviticus 19:18: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor be mindful of wrong against ye children of thy people, but shalt love thy neighbor as thy self: I am the Lord." The Wisdom of Solomon includes the injunction: "Say not thou, I will recompense evil: but wait upon the Lord, and he shall save thee" (Proverbs 20:22). "He that seeketh vengeance, shall find vengeance of the Lord, and he will surely keep his sins," the commentator Jesus the son of Sirach writes in Ecclesiasticus 28:1. And, most important, Jesus Christ Himself explicitly condemns the lex talionis of the Old Testament in the Sermon on the Mount:

But the Sermon describes an ideal of righteousness that few attain, and arguments in favor of retributive justice were long supported by the evidence that God's own mode of punishment was vengeful. In Ecclesiasticus the sage warns: "For the most High hateth the wicked, and will repay vengeance unto the ungodly, and keepeth them against the day of horrible vengeance" (12:6). Christians struggling to reconcile the Lord's prohibition on private revenge with His promise of divine retribution had to ponder chapter 12 of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, his most careful exposition of his creed:

But how, then, is God to achieve His vengeance if He denies vengeance to those who have been wronged? Paul provides an answer in Romans 13:

If, however, the avenger's intention be directed chiefly to some good, to be obtained by means of the punishment of the person who has sinned (for instance that the sinner may amend, or at least that he may be restrained and others be not disturbed, that justice may be upheld, and God honored), then vl, provided other due circumstances be observed.

In such cases, as Hamlet puts it,

Though it be not indeed lawful for us to pray to God for vengeance on our enemies, but to pray for their conversion, that they may become friends; yet if they proceed in their impiety, what is to happen to the despisers of God will happen to them. But Paul quoted not this testimony to show that it is right for us to be as it were on fire as soon as we are injured, and according to the impulse of our flesh, to ask in our prayers that God may become the avenger of our injuries; but he first teaches us that it belongs not to us to revenge, except we would assume to ourselves the office of God; and secondly, he intimates, that we are not to fear that the wicked will more furiously rage when they see us bearing patiently; for God does not in vain take upon himself the office of executing vengeance.

We read in the book of Deuteronomy, that all punishment pertaineth to God, by this sentence, Vengeance is mine, and I will reward. But this sentence we must understand to pertain also unto the Magistrates which do exercise God's room in judgment, and punishing by good and Godly laws, here in earth. And the places of Scripture, which seem to remove from among all Christian men, judgment, punishment, or killing, ought to be understood, that no man (of his own private authority) may be judge over other, may punish, or may kill. But we must refer all judgment to God, to Kings, and Rulers, Judges under them, which be God's officers to execute justice, and by plain words of Scripture, have their authority and use of the sword granted from God.

His sentence is ever deliberate, and guided with ripe wisdom; yet his hand is slower than his tongue; but when he is urged by occasion either to doom or execution, he shows how much he hateth merciful injustice; neither can his resolution or act be reversed with partial importunity. . . . He hates to pay private wrongs with the advantage of his office, and if ever be be partial, it is to his enemy. He is not more sage in his gown than valorous in arms, and increaseth in the rigor of his discipline as the times in danger. His sword hath neither rusted for want of use, nor surfeiteth of blood; but after many threats is unsheathed, as . He is the guard of good laws, the refuge of innocency, the comet of the guilty, the paymaster of good deserts, the champion of justice, the patron of peace, the tutor of the church the father of his country, and, as it were, another god upon earth.

But what if the magistrate is not good? In their notes on Romans the authors of the Geneva Bible pointedly conclude that the very means of divine retribution by which God "preserveth the good and bridleth the wicked" can be turned upon His magistrates as well: "by these words, the Magistrates themselves, are put in mind of that duty which they owe to their subjects."

5 [The conclusion: We must obey the Magistrate, not only for fear of punishment, but much more because that (although the Magistrate hath no power over the conscience of man, yet seeing he is God's minister) he cannot be resisted by any good conscience.] Wherefore ye must be subject, not because of wrath only, but [so far as lawfully we may: for if unlawful things be commanded us, we must answer as Peter teacheth us, It is better to obey God, then men.] also for conscience sake

Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth the law; but the revenge of that wrong, putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, It is the glory of a man to pass by an offence. [Proverbs 19:11] That which is past is gone, and irrevocable; and wise men have enough to do, with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labor in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong, for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man, for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge, is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed, the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still before hand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous, the party should know, whence it cometh. This is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be, not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent. But base and crafty cowards, are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. . . . This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are for the most part fortunate; as that for the death of Caesar; for the death of Pertinax; for the death of Henry the Third of France; and many more. But in private revenges, it is not so. Nay rather, vindictive persons live the life of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end they infortunate.

Kyd's Hieronimo is Knight Marshall or chief justice of Spain, a commoner who has won his monarch's "love and kindnessŠ by his deserts within the court." But when his son is treacherously stabbed to death by two great princes, nephews of his King and the Viceroy of Portugal, even Hieronimo, father of the victim as well as the chief instrument of law in the kingdom, is unable to bring them to justice. "To know the author were some ease of grief," Hieronimo laments, "For in revenge my heart would find relief" (2.5.40­1). When a letter, written in blood and naming the murderers is dropped at his feet, the wary Hieronimo suspects "this unexpected miracle" is really a trick—"to entrap thy life this train is laid," he reasons to himself (3.2.38). To accuse the King's nephew, he realizes, "should draw / Thy life in question, and thy name in hate" (42­3), and he vows to press no charges until he finds proof "to confirm this writ" (49). But even after another letter proves the murderers' identity, justice is denied him. Driven nearly to suicide by grief and his own frustrated desire for vengeance, Hieronimo now seems mad, and when the opportunity to denounce the murderers to the King finally comes, one of them, the Duke's son, blocks his way. When he hears his son's name, Hieronimo raves so violently for justice that the Duke's son easily convinces the King that Hieronimo is "Distract, and in a manner lunatic" (3.12), his complaints about a murdered son sheer madness.

HIERONIMO. Vindicta mihi!
Ay, heaven will be revenged of every ill,
Nor will they suffer murder unrepaid:
Then stay. Hieronimo, attend their will,
For mortal men may not appoint their time.
'Per scelus semper tutum est sceleribus iter.'
Strike, and strike home, where wrong is offered thee;
For evils unto ills conductors be,
And death's the worst of resolution.
For he that thinks with patience to contend
To quiet life, his life shall easily end.
'Fata si miseros juvant, habes saluten
Fata si vitam negant, habes sepulchrum.'
If destiny thy miseries do ease,
Then hast thou health, and happy shalt thou be;
If destiny deny thee life, Hieronimo,
Yet shalt thou be assured of a tomb;
If neither, yet let this thy comfort be,
Heaven covereth him that hath no burial.
And to conclude, I will revenge his death!
But how? not as the vulgar wits of men,
With open, but inevitable ills,
As by a secret, yet a certain mean,
Which under kindship will be cloakèd best
Wise men will take their opportunity,
Closely and safely fitting things to time.
But in extremes advantage hath no time;
And therefore all times fit not for revenge.
Thus therefore will I rest me in unrest,
Dissembling quiet in unquietness,
Not seeming that I know their villainies;
That my simplicity may make them think
That ignorantly I will let all slip—
For ignorance, I wot, and well they know,
Remedium malorum iners est.
Nor aught avails it me to menace them,
Who, as a wintry storm upon a plain,
Will bear me down with their nobility.
No, no, Hieronimo, thou must enjoin
Thine eyes to observation, and thy tongue
To milder speeches than thy spirit affords,
Thy heart to patience, and thy hands to rest,
Thy cap to courtesy, and thy knee to bow,
Till to revenge thou know, when, where and how.

Hieronimo enters with a book; we later learn it is Seneca's. His first words echo the Biblical admonition cited by those who would reserve the right to execute vengeance for God alone: "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." God will never leave murder unavenged, Hieronimo instructs himself. He can safely leave his revenge to God, who alone will decide the time. But a tag from Seneca's tragedy, Agamemnon, "The safe way for crimes is always through (more) crimes," reminds him that the villains who murdered his son will certainly seek to cover up their crimes by silencing him. The reflection that checks his patient submission to heaven's will and prompts the debate within him between faith and the thirst for vengeance that will also deliver him from fear. Instead of waiting for God to avenge his wrongs, Hieronimo now decides to strike back. Evil only attracts more ills, and death is only the worst outcome of bold action. Anyone who hopes that patient submission will assure him "quiet life" will merely make an easy target. Hieronimo now decides to trust in fate rather than providence.

But once he has decided to "revenge his [son's] death" (20), Hieronimo must figure out how he will do it. To do it openly like the simple-minded ("vulgar wits"), who resort to overt violence will expose himself to dire consequences ("inevitable ills") and risk failure. So Hieronimo decides that he will use devious ("secret") but effective ("certain") means hidden ("cloaked") behind a pretended affection ("kindship"). He can afford to bide his time, waiting for an "opportunity," an "advantage," to take his revenge "safely." He will pretend to know nothing, acting like a simpleton so that his enemies will think that they have given him the slip. It is useless to threaten ("menace") them, he knows; their rank ("nobility") will protect them. To get his revenge, Hieronimo concludes, he must cover his tracks; his enemies must not know that he is stalking them.

It is a common practice now a days amongst a sort of shifting companions, that run through every Art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were borne, and busy themselves with the endeavors of Art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca read by Candlelight yields many good sentences, as "Blood is a beggar," and so forth; and if you entreat him faire in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of Tragical speeches.

In 1594 the impresario Philip Henslowe recorded the performance of a Hamlet that does not seem to have been Shakespeare's. Two years later Thomas Lodge made fun in passing of a character who "walks for the most part in black under cover of gravity, and looks as pale as the vizard of the ghost who cried so miserably at the Theatre like an oyster-wife, Hamlet, revenge!"

These allusions to Seneca, Thomas Kyd, and the ghost calling endlessly for revenge like a woman peddling oysters up and down the street make it likely that the old Hamlet belonged to that staple genre of Elizabethan melodrama, revenge tragedy. It was probably written (Nashe thinks so) by Kyd, who wrote The Spanish Tragedy, a wildly popular revenge play with many parallels to Hamlet, including a ghost and a scene of a play-within-a-play, around the same time. But by the 1590s revenge tragedy had come to seem old-fashioned. We have already heard from Nashe on the speechifying and Lodge on the hyperactive ghost in the old Hamlet. The Induction, or dramatized introduction, to an anonymous play, A Warning for Fair Women, performed by Shakespeare's company in 1599, reduced the whole genre to a series of stale clichés: a villain ambitious for a crown, a shrieking ghost, the stage clogged with a heap of dead bodies:

How some damned tyrant, to obtain a crown,
Stabs, hangs, imprisons, smothers, cutteth throats,
And then a Chorus too comes howling in,
And tells us of the worrying of a cat,
Then of a filthy, whining ghost
Lapped in some foul sheet, or a leather pelch,
Comes screaming like a pig half sticked,
And cries Vindicta, revenge, revenge:
With that a little rosin flasheth forth,
Like smoke out of a Tobacco pipe, or a boy's squib:
Then comes in two or three like to drovers,
With tailors' bodkins, stabbing one another.
Is this not trim? Is not here goodly things?

Given the contempt into which revenge tragedy had fallen, we don't know why Shakespeare decided to remake Hamlet around 1601—we do know that the new company of boy actors, the "an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for 't," that Hamlet takes note of (2.2.340­2), had a popular new play of their own based on the old Hamlet, and the eminent English critic William Empson thought Shakespeare was told to come up with one of his own. But we do have some idea of the problems Shakespeare faced in turning what was a roundly derided example of a creaky old melodramatic formula into a stage-worthy piece. The problem more or less built into the structure of every revenge tragedy is the problem of dilation or delay. Revenge tragedy demands that the revenger get his man; just try to imagine a revenge play without a revenge. But it also demands that the action expand to fill the entire play. Unlike an opera, which isn't over until the fat lady sings, a revenge tragedy is over pretty much as soon as the revenger strikes. So the playwright's problem is somehow to motivate a delay of five acts between the two killings, the dastardly deed and its inevitable reprisal, when everyone in the playhouse knows that is what he is up to.

That delay, as Empson points out, is what people complained about with the old Hamlet. Kyd, or whoever wrote it, wasn't able to make his audience believe in the obstacles to his hero's taking his revenge. They knew he was stalling, using "handfuls, of tragical speeches," and "a ghost . . . like an oyster wife," as filler. As Empson puts it, "You had a hero howling out 'Revenge' all through the play, and everybody knows the revenge wouldn't come until the end . . . This fact about the audience . . . is the basic fact about the rewriting of Hamlet." How was Shakespeare going to solve the problem of delay inherent in the structure of revenge tragedy?

Delay and frustration are built into revenge tragedy. Since the play ends when the revenger strikes, the revenger's success must be delayed. Dramatists motivate this structural delay in different ways: usually some kind of obstacle, often external, like determining the identity of the killer (as in a whodunit) or getting close enough to the powerful enemy to be able to kill him (how to do it) explains why it takes the revenger the whole play to get his man. In Elizabethan revenge tragedies the obstacle is usually the monarch himself, who blocks justice by protecting the guilty party and who is often the guilty party himself. The avenging hero, we've seen, is always a subject, a subaltern or dependent, and the enemy who has wronged him is always a powerful prince or magistrate, who abuses the position he has usurped or inherited. Suffering from some intolerable wrong, the hero cannot appeal to the law for justice; his enemy has subverted the very institution from which he seeks redress and wields all of the power of the state to cover up his guilt. Instead the vulnerable hero must hide what he knows and use guile to evade his enemy's power. The revenger, moreover, does not so much act as react, biding his time until his enemy unwittingly offers him an opportunity to strike. His premeditated schemes are seldom successful, and typically he strikes on the spur of the moment.

Shakespeare avails himself of both of these strategies for motivating this structural delay, although he masterfully transforms the action of detecting the killer's identity into one of detecting the identity of his sole eyewitness and accuser, the ghost. Is the ghost a "spirit of health" or a "goblin damned"? Shakespeare complicates the course of Hamlet's revenge first of all by surrounding the crime itself with doubts that are valid within the play even though the genre requires that the ghost is truthful and vengeance is achieved. The effect of these doubts is to postpone Hamlet's certainty; only after he stages the "Mousetrap" and catches "the conscience of the king" (2.2.603) is Hamlet certain of Claudius's guilt. Only then can Hamlet "take the ghost's word for a thousand pound" (3.2.295­6) and begin to seek the means and opportunity to pierce the circle of soldiers and sycophants who defend the throne. In Hamlet Claudius has draped himself in legitimacy, the very "divinity [that] doth hedge a king," (4.5.125), so that Hamlet's quest for justice looks to Claudius's court like treasonous ambition.

Shakespeare also complicates the simple plot of revenge by setting the play in a Christian cosmos. Playing on the moral ambiguity of revenge, he is constantly reminding his audience that the good Christian renounces revenge and practices patience. He constantly raises questions about the state of the soul after death, from Hamlet's jocular "would I had met my dearest foe in heaven" (1.2.182) to the "maimed rites" held for Ophelia, thought dead by her own hand. By contrasting Hamlet with Laertes, his alter ego as a revenger of a dead father, who declares:

To hell allegiance! Vows to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. (4.5.133­5)

Shakespeare uses the ghost not just to plant the seeds of suspicion in Hamlet's mind but just as importantly to bring before the eyes of the audience as well as Hamlet the consequences of violating the Almighty's canons. The ghost seems to have returned from the dead with two gristly tales, the one of his murder and the other of his horrible torments in the flames of purgatory:

I am thy father's spirit,
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combinéd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. (1.5.9­22)

The leperous distilment, whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood (64­70)

we are asked to imagine those pains whose very thought will "freeze" Hamlet's "young blood" as his uncle's "leperous distilment" did "posset / And curd" his father's.

Thus, the Ghost arrives both with a dread "commandment"—avenge my murder—but also with a grim reminder of the costs of obeying it: unless he is absolved or justified by faith, Hamlet's immortal soul will suffer the pains of damnation, either for a fixed term in purgatory (whose pains are indistinguishable from the pains of hell) or forever.

The ghost comes to make the pains of Purgatory as real to Shakespeare's audience as his own murder. But Purgatory was itself a questionable belief. Dismissed and reviled by the new, Calvinist faith, it loomed large in the old religion, Catholicism, whose faithful had been well informed of its pains not to harrow and terrify them but to chasten them to avoid its horrors by reforming their lives. "It is ," the Art or Craft to Live Well and Die Well averred in 1505. The only difference between the pains of purgatory and those of hell was that those of hell were eternal. Souls who entered purgatory were redeemed and would, after a time, ascend to heaven.

Protestants, noting that it had no scriptural authority, simply denied that Purgatory existed. Article 22 of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion defining the creed of the Church of England held "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God." At the moment of their death, Protestants held, all souls went directly to heaven or hell, and never returned. This Protestant position seems to be the one that Hamlet himself takes when he calls death "The undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns" (3.5.81­2). And it bore important consequences for demonology, or the theory of ghosts. Virtually everyone in Shakespeare's time believed in ghosts, but they differed fiercely in how they interpreted those apparitions.

The Chief Pastor of the Calvinist Church of Zürich, which was, after Geneva, the most important redoubt of the new reformed church and home to Zwingli and Bulllinger, Ludwig (Lewes) Lavater (1527-1586) wrote an influential treatise, first published in Latin in 1569 as De spectris, lemuribus et magnis atque insolitis fragoribus, variisque praesagitionibus, quae plerunque obitum hominum, magnas clades, mutationesque imperiorum praecedunt, liber unus, to prove that ghosts were "not the souls of dead men, as some men have thought, but either good or evill Angels, or else some secrete and hid operations of God." It was quickly translated into English.

Contrariwise, evil angels are hurtful and enemies unto men; they follow them everywhere, to the end they may withdraw them from true worshipping of God, and from faith in his only son, Jesus Christ, unto sundry other things. These appear in divers shapes: for if the devil, as Paul doth witness, transformed himself into an angel of light, no less may he take the shape of a prophet, an apostle, evangelist, bishop, and martyr, and appear in their likeness; or so bewitch us, that we verily suppose we hear or see them in very deed. He taketh on him to tell of he is this or that soul, that he may be delivered by this or that means, that by these means he may purchase credit and authority unto those things which have no ground of scripture.

Despite the Protestant Lavater's insistence, informed Catholic belief held that the souls of the dead men did sometimes return and appear to the living: not the damned and the blessed, who never left heaven or hell, but the souls of those consigned to Purgatory, who might be sent back, not through their own power but by God, to undertake some specific purpose. Even the Catholics held, as Lavater points out, that demons could inhabit that shapes of the dead and that the living had to "take diligent heed" to "discern good spirits from evil."

Rejecting Purgatory, Protestants, on the other hand, believed that ghosts could not be the souls of the dead. The skeptic Reginald Scot, who was perhaps the only Elizabethan who did not believe in ghosts, mocked those who rejected Purgatory but still thought "souls and spirits may come out of heaven or hell and assume bodies." In Cyril Tourneur's Atheist's Tragedy, registered for publication in 1611, it's a hypocritical Puritan chaplain with the wonderful name of Languebeau ("Fine Tongue") Snuffe who quite mistakenly claims: "Tush, tush, their walking spirits are mere imaginary fables. There's no such thing in rerum natura" (4.3.274­5). "The souls neither of the faithful nor of infidels do wander any longer on the earth when they be once severed from the bodies," Lavater asserted, because the saved "are by and by in possession of life everlasting; and they that depart in unbelief"—that is, the damned—"do straightway become partakers of eternal damnation." Only the devil made spirits walk in the shape of the dead. Even the Old Testament figure of Saul, according to Lavater, was not raised from the dead by God but counterfeited by a "devilish spirit."

Fifthly, if he had been the true Samuel, he would no doubt have exhorted Saul to repentance, and willed him to wait for aid from God. For though the Prophets do often chide and threaten men, yet do they again revive and solace them. Now because this Samuel doth beat no other thing into his head, but that God was displeased with him, and had already forsaken him, we may not believe that he was the true, but a mere counterfeit Samuel.

For all that do such things are abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth cast them out before thee.
(17:10­12)

Catholics, too, would thus have had their doubts about the ghost of Hamlet's father. "Evil spirits desirous to hurt men both in their goods, bodies, and souls," the orthodox Catholic Pierre La Primaudaye wrote in The French Academie (1594), "use all the means and occasions they can possibly invent and find out, to execute their malice when it pleases God to give them leave." To believe in Purgatory was not to assume that all the returning dead were souls in grace.

A ghost will naturally, if it is possible, appear to the person whom he has most loved while on earth, since this person will be readiest to fulfill any wish then communicated by the departed. But if It be an evil Spirit, yes, truly he has a thousand subtle fetches and foul tricks, and will again and again deceive.... This evil Spirit goes about seeking whom he may devour, and should he chance to find a man already of a melancholic and Saturnian humor, who on account of some great loss, or haply because he deems his honor tarnished, the demon here has a fine field to his hand, and he will tempt the poor wretch to depths of misery and depression.... Now these Spirits appear in very many forms and shapes. . . . Sometimes they even appear under the likeness of some individual who can at once be recognized, a man either still living, or it may be long since dead.... If we see some figure or appearance, we must not at once conclude that this is a disembodied Spirit manifesting itself to us, but let us rather, as did the boy Samuel, ask and inquire two or three times. Neither let us be overmuch startled and alarmed by sudden shrieks and clamor or loud yells, for if evil Spirits appear they cannot do us any further harm than God permits. If they are good Spirits they will entreat us well. If it is a mere phantasm without volition or intelligence, a mere shadow, how foolish to be afraid of it! It is quite true that we are naturally affrighted and our hair will rise and prickle on our heads, nevertheless even if it be a spirit of evil and malignant aspect do not fear any the more, but boldly say: If thou art of God, speak; if thou art not of God, be gone... While it is necessary not to give way to any panicky fear, a man seeing a ghost should not be over-confident in himself and presumptuously daring. Some men in dealing a blow at a phantom have felt as though they encountered a soft feathery substance. On such occasions no sword of tempered steel however trusty will avail, we must fight with spiritual weapons.

To Taillepied evil spirits are especially likely to prey on victims like Hamlet: a man of melancholic humour already afflicted by the "great loss" of his idolized father. And Hamlet takes the bold but foolhardy course: he is "over-confident in himself and presumptuously daring," risking damnation to speak to what may easily, even probably, be an evil spirit:

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. (1.4.40­4)

The question of the ghost's true nature hangs over the action. As Hamlet admits,

The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil, and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy—
As he is very potent with such spirits—
Abuses me to damn me. (2.2.596­601)

And he is never sure that the apparition is not "a damned ghost" (3.2.92) until Claudius calls a halt to Hamlet's staging of "The Murder of Gonzago."

The Protestant denial of Purgatory did not succeed in completely ridding England of ghosts, and in Hamlet Shakespeare himself trumped the views of the learned theologians of Rome and Wittenberg (Hamlet's university and the birthplace of Luther) with the beliefs of the folk, who, among almost all religions and at all levels of society, Protestant theology be damned, clung to its belief in ghosts long after the official demise of Purgatory. In Shakespeare's England the traditional ghost always returned from the dead on a mission, employed, as one writer put it, "in detecting the murderer, in disposing their estate, in rebuking injurious executors, in visiting and counseling their wives and children, in forewarning them of such and such courses, with other matters of like sort." A supernatural remedy where natural remedies had failed, ghosts, Shakespeare's audience largely believed, came to renounce injustices that had escaped detection by ordinary means. So the ghost of old Hamlet, like Banquo's ghost in Macbeth, appears when his killer seems to have gotten away with his murder. On the stage ghosts were almost always taken seriously and treated with respect. And they were far more likely to be heaven's instrument than the devil's spawn. Shakespeare's dazzling portrayal of the "figure like the King that's dead" (1.1.41) invokes an uncertainty about the spirit world among learned Elizabethans, but it finally confirms the wisdom of the folk.

The Hamlet who returns from exile is a changed man. Taken prisoner by pirates, he finds them "thieves of mercy," instruments of divine grace. Breaking the seal on Claudius's "grand commission" to his English tributaries, he uncovers Claudius's plot against his life. Finding the royal seal to forge a new commission in his purse, Hamlet recognizes "even in that was heaven ordinant"; God was ordaining and directing his life's course. With the beginning of the last scene Hamlet now announces that his melancholy brooding has come to an end: "In my heart there was a kind of fighting" / That would not let me sleep" (5.2.4­5). He has found a kind of peace in the idea of divine providence:

Special Providence, "that universal overruling Providence from which nothing flows that is not right, though the reasons thereof may be concealed" (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.17.2) was a central tenet in the Reformed theology of John Calvin, whose beliefs were the foundation of the Church of England. God, Calvin believed, did not merely ordain a general Providence, a grand scheme that determined the broad outlines of history. He also ordained a special providence that oversaw even the smallest, most mundane events in our daily lives. The point was one to which Calvin returned again and again in his theological writings.

11. But when once the light of Divine Providence has illumined the believer's soul, he is relieved and set free, not only from the extreme fear and anxiety which formerly oppressed him, but from all care. For as he justly shudders at the idea of chance, so he can confidently commit himself to God.

Calvin invoked the Protestant theory of resistance to civil authority specifically when it impinged upon the operation of conscience. And the passage about the fall of the sparrow had the same application as well for the translators of the Geneva Bible, whose side note on Matthew 10:28—"Though tyrants be never so raging and cruel, yet we may not fear them"—invoked the same belief that magistrates (like Hamlet the Dane) were justified in resisting monarchs who practiced tyranny. By citing "the fall of a sparrow," Shakespeare's Hamlet brands Claudius as the kind of tyrant whom the godly could dispatch "In perfect conscience," secure in the knowledge that they acted as God's instrument of vengeance, "scourge and minister," and that they could, in Calvin's own words, "safely rely upon his providence."