Thank you for reading!
I was a journalism major and have a teacher's credential in English, but I started reading Shakespeare at 9... my grandmother had copies of Macbeth and Henry VIII, and the editions had footnotes on all the words I couldn't understand. So, that's where my journey with the Bard began -- 30 years, this year!
Hamlet was the one that hurt me the most... I mean, to the soul. Two entire families wiped out, including the true royal line of an entire kingdom ... even the innocent do not survive (poor Lady Ophelia!) all the scheming of those involved in various degrees of evil... which is why I suspect that the "ghost" was someone else entirely, and that since Shakespeare knew the King James version of the Bible and its prohibitions on consulting with the dead, he left the question open. It is telling that the "ghost" tells Hamlet EXACTLY where he came from and has to return, but because it is the image of his father, Hamlet has no resistance to what may well be deception! Macbeth also has a sub-theme like that ... those witches that only show him part of his future, and then mock him with the rest of it later ...