Comparing notes: Amelia/Maria and the ‘larve del passato’

Abstract

In his recent book on Hamlet, Stephen Greenblatt writes:

What there is again and again in Shakespeare, … is a sense that ghosts, real or imagined, are good theatre – indeed, that they are good for thinking about theatre's capacity to fashion realities, to call realities into question, to tell compelling stories, to puncture the illusions that these stories generate, and to salvage something on the other side of disillusionment.