#i just love to explore motifs of insanity in various forms of media

[theofficialpresidentofmars]

I’d like to propose a performance of Hamlet in which the audience is addressed, looked at, and treated as if they were there but ONLY by characters who have gone mad.

in Act 2, when Hamlet’s pretending to go mad, while in the presence of Polonius and others, he sort of pretends to look at the audience, but always glancing over, looking sort of in the wrong direction, putting on a show for the only eyes he thinks are watching. When he’s alone and doing his soliloquies, it’s clear that he’s talking to himself, even though we’re listening in.

And it continues this way until Act 3 Scene 4, when Hamlet runs Polonius through with the sword. For a moment after the deed is done, there’s a shocked silence on the stage. As Hamlet goes to examine the body, he falters, slightly, as he becomes aware of just how many eyes are on him. And slowly; he looks at us, and through the rest of the scene his attention is torn between the audience and his mother, until the ghost appears (perhaps in the audience as well) and he’s… sort of put back on track. But from then on, all his soliloquies, asides, he begins to talk to us, in the audience.

And we notice the change, sure, but we don’t really get what it means, not until Ophelia goes mad, and while onstage she begins to give audience members flowers, to talk to them as the others call her crazy. And at that point most of us can make the connection.

From then until the play is over, Hamlet can’t fully ignore us. Every other character will, and does (besides maybe the gravediggers if you wanted to include anyone else), but we’re ever present in his sight. As he dies, we’re the ones he refers to when he says ‘you that look pale and tremble at this chance, that are but mutes or audience to this act’