[A Book of the Play by Dutton Cook]@TWC D-Link book
A Book of the Play

CHAPTER XVIII
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In "Julius Caesar," Brutus is visited in his tent by the ghost of the murdered Caesar.

In "Hamlet," we have, of course, the ghost of the late king.

In "Macbeth" the ghost of Banquo takes his seat at the banquet, and in the caldron scene we are shown apparitions of "an armed head," "a bloody child," "a child crowned, with a tree in his hand," and "eight kings" who pass across the stage, "the last with a glass in his hand." In "Richard III." quite a large army of ghosts present and address themselves alternately to Richard and to Richmond.

The ghosts of Prince Edward, Henry VI., Clarence, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan, Hastings, the two young Princes, Queen Anne, and Buckingham invoke curses upon the tyrant and blessings upon his opponent.

It would be hard to find in the annals of the drama another instance of such an assembly of apparitions present upon the stage at the same time.
In Otway's tragedy of "Venice Preserved," the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre, which confronted the distracted Belvidera in the last scene, were for a long time very popular apparitions, although in later performances of the play it was thought proper to omit them, and to allow the audience to imagine their presence, or to conclude that Belvidera only fancied that she saw them.


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