Hamlet in Limbo

One of the most innovative interpretations of Shakespeare's Hamlet, more specifically Hamlet's father's ghost is provided towards the end of Stephen Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton University Press) , a book from three years ago. The book is not carried by many stores even in the U.S. and I got my copy from a Borders store in Washington DC only late last year, though it's on Amazon.
This book provides a long but satisfying discussion of medieval belief in Purgatory, the violent power politics of Catholicism and Protestantism in 16th century England and the written narratives of ghostly apparitions from an individual perspective. In short, this is as much a history as a book of literary criticism - which is Greenblatt's innovation, sustained in his later work of Shakespearian biography, Will in the World (W.Norton).
It works because of concrete examples that buttress Greenblatt's psychologically inclined arguments which would have fallen by the wayside where there not sufficient data from the period's historical and narrative literature that he provides. Ghostly haunting equals memory of the dead - though there's more to the equation as he discusses the ups and downs of purgatorial fires, communication with dead loved ones and the role of both institutional and individual beliefs.
In the middle of the book, you wonder where Hamlet is and think he is probably in Limbo instead of Purgatory, but it builds chapter by chapter towards the end when he finally discusses Shakespeare's stage, Hamlet and his ghostly father in a manner worthy of praise.
After finishing the book, I kept wondering how medieval beliefs are sustained in the present. Having lived all my life in a traditional Catholic country, much of what he discusses is still around me, part of my culture, even part of my current religion. I kept wondering whether his secular premise is true, and whether belief in Purgatory should be sustained as a matter of hope, as a matter of love for the departed, or even as a matter of fact or fiction. I guess, then, that Hamlet is a peripheral consideration in this work, and the play serves merely as a stage for a discussion of Purgatory built on a premise.