“The dread of something after death”: Hamlet and the Emotional Afterlife of Shakespearean Revenants

Abstract

The Shakespearean corpus provides fifty instances of the word “dread.” My examination suggests that an atmosphere of dread correlates with specific genres (the Roman plays, English histories), subjects (politics and history), and works (The Rape of Lucrece and Hamlet). In a few cases, notably Lucrece, “dread” is also associated with an acute awareness of life-after-death in the form of history and reputation. Dread of God’s judgment is a common theme in uses of word before 1600, as recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary. In Hamlet, however, there emerges a more modern connotation of “dread” as a malaise that persists after death. The old-fashioned ghost has confidence that his material condition in whatever afterlife he inhabits could make Hamlet’s hair stand on end; he has a traditional early modern sense of dread as terror that expresses itself through the body. But the dread that stays Hamlet’s hand is different. I place Hamlet and his father’s ghost within the context of other early modern revenants who relive emotionally their pasts. These revenants belong to the poetic female complaint, a tradition popular in the 1590s that specifically informs The Rape of Lucrece. The dread felt by Lucrece and Hamlet comes from anticipating historical reputation but also from a perception of the conflict between historical character and lived reality that haunts historical actors in the afterlife.

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