Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
The ghost acts as a believable, to such cultures, of murder accuser. Without it, it's just a story of a deranged paranoid sliding into deeper murderous insanity. Do we have any written reason to think his uncle did murder his father without that voice on high saying, "yep, he killed me."
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Oh yes. "The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king". In the context of Hamlet, the attestation of a ghost is about as compelling as an anonymous note. There's a reason why Hamlet opens communication with the spectre by saying:
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
He doesn't know whether it's his father, a demon, a prankster fairy, or an illusion cast by a witch. He needs confirmation. The ghost could be replaced with a medical examiner, a small child who saw something, an informant who dies right after telling Hamlet that something is hinky, or even a message from the victim right before he was murdered. The ghost is a plot device. Pretending to be insane so his enemy will take him lightly and not kill him...that's the plot itself.
As to the idea of setting Shakespeare plays in historical Japan...well it was good enough for Kurosawa.