Artifactual knowledge in hamlet

Howard Marchitello

pp. 137-153

in: Lowell Gallagher, Shankar Raman (eds), Knowing Shakespeare, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

The opening scene of Hamlet stages two spectacular and related moments. The first is the anticipated but nevertheless startling appearance of some "thing" — "this dreaded sight," "this apparition," this "figure like the King" — that we will learn to call the Ghost of Old Hamlet. Next is the sudden conversion of the skeptic: "How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale. / Is not this something more than fantasy?" Instantly converted, Horatio replies, "Before my God, I might not this believe / Without the sensible and true avouch / Of mine own eyes."¹ The conjoined effect of these two moments is double-edged; even as his response highlights the fundamentally important issue of the relation between seeing and knowing that lies at the play's heart, Horatio's words serve to obscure precisely those complexities that obtain between the senses and knowledge that the rest of the play will investigate with concentration and rigor.