Boydells Collection: Hamlet and the Ghost by Henry Fuseli.

Plate XLIV of Volume II of Boydell's Shakespeare Prints; based on a painting of 1789. The Boydell text to the engraving says: "Hamlet. Act I. Scene IV. A platform before the Castle of Elsinor. Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost. Painted by H. Fuseli, R. A. Engraved by R. Thew." This Boydell engraving is not of a specific performance, but it shows a Romantic's intense vision of a Shakespeare scene. Addison writes in "The Spectator": "Among the several artifices which are put in practice by the poets, to fill the minds of the audience with terror, the first place is due to thunder and lightning, which are often made use of at the descending of a god, at the vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant. I have known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in very great alarm all the while it has been ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked solemnly across the stage, or rose through a cleft in it and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors, and when they only come in as aids and assistances to the poet, they are not only to be excused but to be applauded."