Shakespeare

Richard Burbage played the titular hero. It was a part in which he could excel, and proves to an almost excessive degree that the art of Elizabethan drama was the art of character. There is an allusion to Burbage’s acting of Hamlet in a poem of 1604, which describes how the apparent madness of the prince was signified by Burbage sucking on a pen as if it were a tobacco pipe and drinking from an inkpot as if it were a bottle of ale. It seems to have been a memorable piece of stage “business.” If we were to provide a Jinglelike anatomy of Hamlet’s changing passions, however, it would read something like this. In turn Hamlet displays himself as ironic, sincere, obedient, despairing, disgusted, welcoming, questioning, disgusted, speculative, impetuous, angry, scholarly, antic, jocular, actorish, despairing, of mimic disposition, sarcastic, welcoming, speculative, despairing, exuberant, self-punishing, changeable (very), confused, contemptuous, actorish, courteous, playful, threatening, hesitant, fierce, scornful, rhetorical, bewildered, soul-searching, macabre, furious, mocking, stoical, parodic, and resigned. It has become well known as a part to challenge actors; to play it competently, by general consent, they have to drag into the light parts of their personality they thought they had lost.

Shakespeare was known to be the master of soliloquy long before Hamlet – it was one of his “strengths” that could be called upon in patching up a play such as Sir Thomas More- but in this play he refines his art to the extent that the soliloquy seems to become the index of evolving consciousness. It is no longer a summary of “this is what I am” but, rather, of “this is what I am becoming.” It has been remarked that, in the same period, the growth of literacy was leading to a great extension of letters and private diaries; writing itself encouraged “introspection and reflection.” ¹ This throws new light on the often noticed allusions to books in Hamlet.

But can we speak of interiority on the Elizabethan stage, where a whole set of theatrical conventions determined staging and acting? It is perhaps with Hamlet that it first becomes possible to do so. For the first time it is not anachronistic to discuss the “character” of Hamlet even if it remains utterly mysterious, not least to Hamlet himself. Julius Caesar and Henry V live in a world of circumstance and event; they are lodged, as it were, in a real world. Hamlet’s reality, in contrast, is almost entirely self-created. His soliloquies often have a dubious relation to the action of the plot, which is why they can be added or removed in the various versions of the play without any noticeable interruption to the story. Nevertheless Hamlet remains the very pivot of the narrative. Like his creator, his centre is nowhere and his circumference is everywhere.

Hamlet has no reason to exist except as a projection from Shakespeare. He is a master of every mood and subject to none. He is possessed by an extraordinary mental agility and energy. He has many voices, but it is hard to locate any central or defining voice. No one is so free with words and yet so secretive about himself. He is addicted to puns and to word-play, but his obscenities are matched by what Sigmund Freud called his “sexual coldness.” ² The play is invaded by the theme of duality and doubleness, of appearing to be what you are not. That is why it is also suffused with the spirit of playing. It is not too much to say that Hamlet could only have been written by a consummate actor.