Why isn't the ghost real in the story The Tragedy of Hamlet?

Answer 1

Do you mean, it's all a play so nothing in it is real? Because within the context of the story, the ghost is very real indeed. He is seen by a number of people including Horatio and Barnardo as well as by Hamlet. Hamlet is the only one who hears him speak, but what the ghost tells him is true, not a fiction created by Hamlet's brain. The ghost in Hamlet is as real as the ghost in any other ghost story, like A Christmas Carol, or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Answer 2

The real reason we know that there really is a ghost is that it is seen not only by Hamlet, but also by Horatio and Marcellus. It cannot therefore be a figment of Hamlet's imagination.

However, only Hamlet hears the ghost speak, and so some productions have made the ghost's voice a figment of Hamlet's imagination, by showing Hamlet saying the ghost's lines rather than the actor playing the ghost. (Sometimes the ghost is not played by an actor but is only a lighting effect.) However, if that is so, Hamlet seems somehow to be very well-informed about the truth of his father's death, or how would he know to make the Mousetrap play so similar to the actual circumstances of the murder?

Answer 3

hamlet wasnt afraid of the ghost because he knew it was his dead fathers ghost. Or it looked like his dead father . One of the two!