The ghost, as a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct creature. As Bob Acres said of "damns," ghosts "have had their day;" or perhaps it would be more correct to say, their night. It may be some consolation to them, however, in their present fallen state, to reflect that they were at one time in the enjoyment of an almost boundless prosperity and popularity. For long years they were accounted among the most precious possessions of the stage. Addison writes in "The Spectator": "Among the several artifices which are put in practice by the poets, to fill the minds of the audience with terror, the first place is due to thunder and lightning, which are often made use of at the descending of a god, at the vanishing of a devil, or at the death of a tyrant. I have known a bell introduced into several tragedies with good effect, and have seen the whole assembly in very great alarm all the while it has been ringing. But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English theatre so much as a ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody shirt. A spectre has very often saved a play, though he has done nothing but stalked solemnly across the stage, or rose through a cleft in it and sunk again without speaking one word. There may be a proper season for these several terrors, and when they only come in as aids and assistances to the poet, they are not only to be excused but to be applauded."
The reader may be reminded that Shakespeare has evinced a very decided partiality for ghosts. In "The Second Part of King Henry VI.," Bolingbroke, the conjurer, raises up a spirit. In "Julius Cæsar," Brutus is visited in his tent by the ghost of the murdered Cæsar. 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. Here, however, is the extract from the original play:
BELVIDERA. Ha! look there!
[The Ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre rise together, both bloody.
My husband bloody, and his friend too! Murder!
Who has done this? Speak to me, thou sad vision!
[Ghosts sink.
On these poor trembling knees, I beg it. Vanished!
Here they went down. Oh! I'll dig, dig the den up.
You shan't delude me thus. Ho! Jaffier, Jaffier,
Peep up and give me but a look. I have him!
I've got him, father! Oh, now I'll smuggle him!
My love! my dear! my blessing! help me! help me!
They have hold on me, and drag me to the bottom.
Nay, now they pull so hard. Farewell. [She dies.
MAID. She's dead.
Breathless and dead.
This may seem very sad stuff, but it would be unfair to judge Otway's plays by this one extract. "Venice Preserved" is now
shelved as an acting drama, but it was formerly received with extraordinary favour, and is by no means deficient in poetic merit. Campbell, the poet, speaks of it, in his life of Mrs. Siddons, as "a tragedy which so constantly commands the tears of audiences that it would be a work of supererogation for me to extol its tenderness. There may be dramas where human character is depicted with subtler skill—though Belvidera might rank among Shakespeare's creations; and 'Venice Preserved' may not contain, like 'Macbeth' and 'Lear,' certain high conceptions which exceed even the power of stage representation—but it is as full as a tragedy can be of all the pathos that is transfusable into action." Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral agency." The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly commends Mrs. Siddons's delivery of the passage, "I'll dig, dig the den up!" and the action which accompanied the words.
For the time ghosts had been only incidental to a performance; by-and-by they were to become the main features and attractions of stage representation. Still they had not escaped ridicule and caricature. Fielding, in his burlesque tragedy of "Tom Thumb," introduced the audience to a scene between King Arthur and the ghost of Gaffer Thumb. The king threatens to kill the ghost, and prepares to execute his threat, when the apparition kindly explains to him, "I am a ghost and am already dead." "Ye stars!" exclaims King Arthur, "'tis well."
In his humorous notes to the published play, Fielding states, with mock gravity: "Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the great scarcity of ghosts. Whence this proceeds I will not presume to determine. Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that sublime sort of language which a ghost ought to speak. One says ludicrously that ghosts are out of fashion; another that they are properer for comedy; forget
ting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told us that a ghost is the soul of tragedy," &c. &c. But when, towards the commencement of the present century, melodrama was first brought upon the boards, the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe were being dramatised, and such pieces as "The Tale of Mystery," "The Bleeding Nun," and "The Castle Spectre," were obtaining public favour, it was clear that room was being made for the stage ghost; the way was cleared for it to become the be-all and the end-all of the performance, the prominent attraction of the evening.