Hamlet: Theatre and Acting

“With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole”

Claudius, 1.2 dirge

Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off

Gertrude, 1.2 colour

Seems madam? nay it is, I know not seems. / ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother

Hamlet, 1.2. inky cloak

 For they are actions that a man might play, / But I have that within which passes show - / These but the trappings and the suits of woe

 Hamlet, 1.2 woe

I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on

Hamlet, 1.5 antic disposition

As if he had been loosèd out of hell”

Ophelia 2.1 loosed

a crafty madness

Guildenstern, 3.1.8

‘The harlot’s cheek, beautied with plastering art,/ Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it/ Than my deed is to my most painted word.

 Claudius, 3.1 harlot

“The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king

Hamlet, 2.2 conscience king

I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’Capitol, Brutus killed me

Hamlet and Polonius 3.2. brute

None wed the second but who killed the first

Player queen wed

A second time I kill my husband dead / When second husband kisses me in bed.

Player queen bed

The lady doth protest too much methinks

Gertrude protest

Let the galled jade winch, our withers are unwrung

Hamlet, 3.2 withers

“The rugged Pyrrhus, whose sable arms, / Black as his purpose, did the night resembl

Hamlet, 2.2 Pyrrhus

I, the son of the murderèd, / Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, / Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

Hamlet, 2.2 whore

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature

Hamlet, 3.1. action action

Head to foot / Now he is total gules, horridly tricked / With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons

Hamlet, 2.2 horribly tricked

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I

THIRD SOLILOQUY

We are reminded that art holds a mirror up to nature, but that the heart of a man’s mystery is not easily plucked out.

Harold Jenkins

Performance is part of reality.

 Gillian Woods