The Idea of Spirits and the Supernatural You will no doubt notice that ghosts and spirits play a rather large role in Hamlet. Not merely as an oft used character, but also as a main basis for the plotline, and one of the key indications of Hamlet’s madness. His dead father’s spirit stays on our mortal plane to explain how he did to Hamlet. The idea in the play is that the ghost …showed first 75 words of 483 total…

…showed last 75 words of 483 total…soaring, and with religion’s slowly decreasing numbers, there is nowhere near as much belief in the supernatural (in the Western world, at least). We are more educated as a whole, and know far more about the world than our predecessors did. As a result of their lack of education, their lack of ability to explain many things about the world, and their religions, most people believed in spirits and the supernatural during Elizabethan times.