Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
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Kelly Jones is a lecturer at the University of Lincoln. Her research interests include the function and effect of meta-theatricality in the drama of the English Renaissance, both in the sixteenth and seventeenth century and on later stages. Her argument in the following article is inspired by a popular eighteenth century analogy that aligned Shakespeare with the spectre of Hamlet’s Ghost, and she discusses how the representation of the Ghost in performance from the sixteenth century to the present day can be perceived as indicative of contemporary attitudes towards the playwright himself. Furthermore, the article asserts, the liminal figure of stage representations of the Ghost, divided between presence and absence ostensibly demonstrates the way that the spectre of Shakespeare is permitted to haunt the play in performance.