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.
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