The Hamlet Project

And with incredible elegance, Shakespeare makes it clear that while Hamlet and the audience can see this ghost, Gertrude cannot. He doesn’t have to put in an explanatory stage direction like (The Ghost is not visible to Gertrude.) He just has her say this gorgeous line about what she sees instead. This is what someone talking to a ghost that you cannot see looks like. This is what an absence that feels like a presence to someone else looks like.