Old Hamlet's Ghost: Victim of Regicide or Agent of Evil?

Many scholars who study William Shakespeare's play Hamlet: Prince of Denmark disagree as to the nature of the ghost. While some contend that the ghost is truly the suffering spirit of Hamlet's dead father, others argue that the ghost is precisely the type of “goblin damn'd” that “hath power T' assume a pleasing shape…to damn” the prince. Please read the follow excerpt from Harry Morris' book entitled Last Things in Shakespeare: Many reasons to doubt the good offices of the ghost develop as early as the first act. These reasons never disappear, and we are forced to face the proposition that the ghost may be a demon from hell, assuming a known and beloved shape, to work the usual design of devils: winning souls for hell. Although everything in this play—most of all, the thoughts of its protagonist—remain heaven-oriented, surprisingly little that is good can be perceived in the ghost. But to find the ghost demonic does not mean that Hamlet, when he completes the revenge desired by the ghost, has damned his own soul. Heaven's goal and hell's may be identical. In fact, in terms of results, Elizabethans would argue that they must be identical, for nothing can be counter to God's great design. The difference lies in motives and means. Reestablishment of order and harmony in a corrupt Denmark is called for clearly. The devil simply uses the ready-made murder of King Hamlet to his own ends. He tries to embark Prince Hamlet on private and scourgeful 
revenge, while heaven demands public and ministerial justice. Only Hamlet's continual practice of prayer (I.v.132) and of holy meditation, which in his weaker moments he equates with cowardice, ultimately thwarts the devil, just as his continual alertness thwarts Claudius. And though, at the end, he loses his life as a result of Claudius's machinations, he does so not because of a failure of alertness. We are told carefully of the ill-feeling about Hamlet's heart. He loses his life to Claudius but has defeated the devil: the readiness is all. He submits to God, becomes a minister, actions which apparently in God's design require the loss of his life; but Denmark is restored to health, and Hamlet goes with flights of angels to a fairer crown than any worn in Denmark. If then the ghost is evil, it has its own purposes, which are alien to God's ways, but incapable for long of disrupting God's order; and although the ghost walks to pervert Hamlet to evil, it walks also, as God designs, to warn of “some strange eruption to [the] state” (I.i.69). It comes a harbinger, “preceding still the fates,” a “prologue to the omen coming on” (I.i.122-23); it means, even to the least of one of those in the play, that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.iv.90). —From Last Things in Shakespeare by Harry Morris, Florida State University Press, Tallahassee, Florida, 1985: 33-4. Assignment: In a well-written essay, please respond to Morris' argument. Do you agree or disagree with his position regarding the nature of the ghost? Be sure to provide ample evidence from the play to support your analysis.