Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/421

 The Folklore of Shakespeare. 393

He complained that he was "cut off in the blossoms of his sins, unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd." That is, he had not received the eucharist or extreme unction. Other spirits in the same case remained wanderers if they had not received funeral rites. We find note of unlaid ghosts in Cyvibeline, and of enclosed ghosts, who are let free when the graves fly open :

" Now 'tis the time of night, That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite." M.N.D. v. 2.

Calphurnia, when she warns Caesar of his danger, tells him that aforetime she never gave way to any fear or super- stition, "yet now they fright me."

" The graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead, And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets."

Julius Caesar, ii. 2.

Horatio, referring to these portents, uses almost the same words :

" In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman street."

Hamlet, i. i.

These horrors seem to appeal to Shakespeare's imagina- tion, and he frequently referred to them. The ghost of Hamlet's father is sometimes seen by all on the stage, and sometimes only by his son, but he will address no one but Hamlet. Banquo's ghost is seen only by Macbeth, who asks him to appear in any horrible form rather than as a ghost : u q'ake any shape than that." Macbeth, iii. 4.

Ghosts disliked light, so Brutus's taper burned dim when Caesar's ghost appeared.

It was also a popular belief that the candle burned blue when an evil spirit was in the house. Richard III., in his