Greenblatt, Stephen. Hamlet in Purgatory. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001

Stephen Greenblatt says of William Shakespeare's Hamlet that he "wanted to know where he [Shakespeare] got the matter he was working with and what he did with that matter" (4). In this book, Greenblatt studies the history of Purgatory as both a belief and an institution and its many views and changes during the mid-sixteenth century. He looks at the spiritual and social customs that influenced Shakespeare's ideas of death, hell, and punishment. Greenblatt looks at Christian, primarily Catholic theology, but Shakespeare had to endure the various changes in culture that related to Purgatory and still use the idea in a non-offensive manner.
Since there is a great ambiguity of feeling and belief about Purgatory in Shakespeare's early seventeenth century England, that ambiguity is also reflected in Shakespeare's Ghost of King Hamlet and the burial of Ophelia. Greenblatt looks at 17th century human nature and a haunted human memory to give a historical interpretation of beliefs about death and Purgatory.
Originally the belief in Purgatory was a way for Catholics to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Protestant beliefs and authorities declared the belief false and banned the religious practices that aided the journey. In the past, Purgatory seemed to be a method of negotiating with the dead. Although the Protestant attacks destroyed outward displays of this belief, those attacks did not destroy inner longings and fears promoted by the Catholic Church for years. Greenblatt suggests that Shakespeare changed this human desire to commune with, assist, and be rid of the dead
Greenblatt looks at medieval religion, interprets several apparitions that haunt Shakespeare's heroes, and explores the culture that causes many of these beliefs. He uses primarily Saint Patrick's Purgatory, The Gast of Gy, and the Supplication of Souls, along with requiem masses to establish his views. He studies theological differences, but he also delays a direct literary analysis of Hamlet to establish his argument.
According to Greenblatt, Shakespeare's use of ghost scenes onstage is a sign of deep interest. The dramatic use of ghosts allows Shakespeare to use a number of traditional beliefs: the classical Hades, the popular Hell, the banned domain of Catholic Purgatory, and the common view of uncertainty about the very possibility of ghosts. The figure of the ghost is used often in Shakespeare's plays and raises theological, psychological, and theatrical questions to which he never provides definitive answers. He uses ghosts in different ways illustrating the changing perspectives of the ghost as a figure of false evidence, a figure of history's nightmare, a figure of deep psychic disturbance, and a figure of theater (157).
Again, according to Greenblatt, the inward compulsion of Hamlet to over think the situation is contrary to the act of murder that he wishes to commit to gain his revenge. However, Hamlet's indecisiveness, one of the most debated points of the play, is seen in Hamlet's first response to the Ghost and is in answer to the Ghost's command of "Remember me" (208). At this point the play shifts in emphasis from vengeance to remembrance. (208)
In addition, to the delay because of Hamlet's doubts about the reliability of the Ghost's account of King Hamlet's murder, Hamlet delays his first chance to kill Claudius because he wishes to send Claudius straight to Hell. Death at the moment of confession
would give Claudius the right to go to Heaven. Tudor and Stuart texts allow Shakespeare to use a belief in Purgatory as a "sly jest, a confidence trick, a mistake, ... or a fable or a story" (236), but not as a reality. Shakespeare uses many illusions, but doesn't go far enough. to get into trouble.
However, the second problem is that the souls in Purgatory were saved. The old Hamlet died without last rites and with earthly sins that needed to be burned away, but he could not commit new sins. Purgatory is compatible with a Christian and Catholic call for remembrance, but the call for vengeance is premeditated murder and could only come from Hell. Greenblatt speculates whether the Ghost is actually that of the old Hamlet in Purgatory or in Hell. (237)
The play itself forces together a large number of incompatible accounts of almost everything that matters: sanity and insanity, the primary reason for the delay, Gertrude's innocence, the truth of the account of the old king's murder, the location of the Ghost in Purgatory or Hell. It shows that a Catholic ghost haunts a Protestant Shakespeare. Shakespeare can use the stage to maintain the longings and fears included in negotiating with the dead that had been destroyed by the Protestant attack on the "middle state of souls" (256). Although there is a lack of evidence to show that theatre has added to its use the old system in which spirits solicit prayers and indulgences to gain liberation from the pain of Hell, there are numerous lines in Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe that still refer to Catholic theology and the church's spiritual power to administer punishment for sin.