Play-Within-A-Play: Illustrating A Character In Multiple Dimensions

Lens Analysis

Hamlet is widely recognized as one of the most complicated and conflicting character among all of William Shakespeare’s creation. The start of Hamlet’s story compounds two catastrophic events, the murder of Hamlet’s father and the remarriage of Hamlet’s mother, to burden Hamlet with tremendous grief and depressive emotion, leading him to the road of revenge. However, Hamlet’s innate, hesitant and introspective personality making him less a typical anger-directed avenger that can commonly be found in tragedy works.  His tragic destiny is not solely determined by fate but also his reactions to life events. In the Tragedy of Hamlet, the audiences explore Hamlet’s inner journey to search for the reasons and responses for life, for death, for love, and for revenge. 1 The play scene (Act 3, Scene 2) serves as a central point in the Tragedy of Hamlet by forming an intricate network that connects characters, of the past to the present, of the imaginary world to the theatrical world, and of the inner world to the reality world, providing a place for audiences to experience the characters in multiple dimensions.

 

The play scene in the Tragedy of Hamlet features an interesting play-within-a-play structure. Hamlet invited the King Claudius and the Queen Gertrude to the show “The Murder of Gonzago” (hereafter referred as “the dumb show”) in purpose to confirm the King’s guilty in murdering Hamlet’s father. The necessity to present the dumb show is often debatable among scholars and directors. Opposes argues that the dumb show is superfluous and repeating the ghost story which has been described in previous scenes.2 Given the complicated personality of Hamlet, the dumb show should not be a redundant element of the main plot; But, it interacts with Hamlet’s side play to further illustrate Hamlet’s inner conflicts, reflection, hesitation, and anxiety to the audience.

 

Hamlet once expressed his envy to Horatio’s ability not to be a “passion’s slave”– to stay calm and graceful to whatever happened in life. This implies that Hamlet is feeling overwhelmed and confused by emotions, despite his will to execute his plan with calm and reason. In the start of the play scene, Hamlet’s anxiety about his plan and uncertainty of his uncle’s guiltiness are strategically concealed by being a double actor. In the side play, Hamlet pretend as a mad audience or a clown, to secretly observe the King and the Queen’s reactions toward the metaphoric show. Hamlet’s obsession with acting and performance seems to be his mean to mediate these internal distressing emotions. The acting instructions that Hamlet gives to the players in the beginning of the play scene reveals his view of being an actor: act to direct audience and to reflect the nature with control of emotion and expression.

 

Though Hamlet acts as a mad audience, his playful dialogs with Ophelia, before the pantomime, works as narration to establish atmosphere for the dumb show. In reference to the two catastrophic events, he first teases Ophelia with conversation of sexual implication, which reflecting on his view on sex and female. Then, he purposely reminds the characters and audiences about his father’s death with a distorted time frame. The distorted time frame can be interpreted as an irony to his mother’s forgetfulness to his father’s recent death. The audience inside and outside the play are hinted to relate these two previews to the following pantomime. After the pantomime, Ophelia asked “What means this, my lord?”. For a moment, Hamlet return to the reality and replies with the answer of “mischievous fun” and “The players cannot keep counsel. They’ll tell all””, informing audiences of his true feeling toward his own destiny and his urge to uncovered his intention to revenge.

 

The long dialogs between the Player-King and Player-Queens about love and loyalty in the mischievous dumb show can be regarded as a presentation of Hamlet’s inner imaginative dialogs of his parents, also as a self-conversation that is never unveiled to the audience. For the first time, audience and himself can witness Hamlet’s inner conflicts and his affection towards his mother. He seems to understand the human nature of forgetfulness but still cannot forgive his mother’s behaviors. The confusion and disappointment leave a profound impact on Hamlet’s attitude toward love and relationship. He inner world is filled with conflicting feelings and questions. These are questions can only be resolved by his mother. In reality, Hamlet never has a chance to ask these questions to the Old King and his mother. By acting as mad audience in the side play, Hamlet can finally ask those questions to Queen Gertrude without over-expressing his emotion. Queen Gertrude’s innocent and unaffected response affirms her betrayal to be real. This is one of the critical step trigger Hamlet’s fall.

 

The complexity of interwinding multiple plays and roles challenges directors and scholars. However, without such an intricate interaction, the character cannot be fully developed.  The delicate feelings of Hamlet will never be understood and audience will not able to appreciate the play in depth.

 

Through the play scene of the Tragedy of Hamlet, the playwright Shakespeare demonstrates the capability of theatrical performing art to show the most meticulous details of human emotion.  The skill and strategy which Shakespeare used to creates a parallel universe from the characters’ inner and outer worlds is remarkable. The play-within-a-play and the side play overcome a character’s natural limitation to expression its emotion and thoughts. By manipulating the timing and wording of the dialogs from characters in different play roles and time zone, he started a psychological conversation that communicate each other’s true feelings in multiple dimensions.

Works Cited

1.    Milne, Joseph. “Hamlet: The Conflict between Fate and Grace.” Shakespearean Criticism, edited by
   Michelle Lee, vol. 123, Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center, remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=GLS&sw=w&u=cuny_baruch&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CH1420091417&asid=b0bdb1617c33bd975f69b57f8cc7602a.
   Accessed 23 May 2017. Originally published in Hamlet Studies, vol. 18, no. 1-2, Summer-Winter 1996, pp. 29-48.
2.    Gibinska, Marta. “The Play’s the Thing: The Play Scene in Hamlet.” Shakespearean Criticism, edited by Michelle Lee, vol. 137, Gale, 2011. Literary Sources, remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GLS&sw=w&u=cuny_baruch&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CGYDMUM840296775&it=r&asid=bedca5f2f2173b4f53ead1d4448e3ef4. Accessed 23 May 2017. Originally published in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Eastern and Central European Studies, edited by Jerzy Limon and Jay L. Halio, University of Delaware Press, 1993, pp. 184