In Telemachus Stephen remembers a ghostly light
playing about his mother's face as she lay dying. He thinks of
it again in Proteus: "Bridebed, childbed, bed of
death, ghostcandled." His thoughts in Telemachus
make clear that this spectacle was a source of the nightmare that has
turned his mother into a vampirish ghoul:
"Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my
soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly
light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in
horror, all prayed on their knees." Several phrases here
strongly evoke the ghost of Hamlet's father.
The ghost in Hamlet glares silently on all but the
young prince, singling him out from the normal run of life. It
comes to inform him of the guilt of a murderous uncle and an
adulterous mother, and to urge him to do something about it.
To his mother, Hamlet cries, "Look you, how pale he
glares! / His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching
to stones, / Would make them capable" (3.4.125-27). But the
ghost acts, as Horatio observes, "As if it some impartment did
desire / To you alone" (1.4.58-60). Speaking
to Hamlet alone, it tells a horrifying tale ("O,
horrible, O, horrible, most horrible!") of King
Hamlet's torturous death by poison, and implies that his
tortures in Purgatory are far worse (1.5). It wants revenge on
the King, it wants Hamlet to step in between his mother and
her sexual partner, and it weights these awful commands with
the spiritual authority associated with the afterlife. Hamlet
does not know whether he can trust the supernatural spirit as
the true ghost of his father, but he does feel all the weight
of divine commandment: "O God!" "O my prophetic soul!" "O all
you host of heaven!"
Oppressed by his responsibility, and by his grief and anger,
the prince becomes still more alienated from others in his
world. In much the same way, the ghostly appearance of
Stephen’s mother singles him out from the happiness of the
living, oppressing him with a divinely sanctioned command. But
in Stephen's case the ghost comes to accuse him, and
to command: Repent! Pray! Kneel
down!
