Horatio in Pieces: Or, How to Deal with Ghosts

Abstract

ABSTRACT From the early moments in Hamlet when he offers a ‘piece’ (1.1.18) of himself to his readiness to consider a range of folkloric narratives, Horatio’s approach to the supernatural is one marked by fragmentation. Rather than critiquing the disparate pieces of Horatio and his philosophy, I explore how his spiritual discernment intersects with the early modern discourse on belief as dispositional and open to revision. In tracing Horatio’s different pieces, which I argue can never be collected into an integrated whole, I interrogate the notion of belief itself as one marked by extremes. Of course, these extremes have captured our critical attention, from Hamlet’s staging of The Murder of Gonzago to the intense passions that almost all the other figures in the play express when confronted with the inexplicable or the uncanny. Instead, I argue that Horatio offers us a way to read discernment on the early modern stage as a viable method, in which one’s belief relies not only on ‘your philosophy’ (1.4.166) or religious doctrine, but combines an array of ‘pieces’ for encountering the potentially demonic figure of the Ghost of Hamlet.