Jail

People tend to do things better when they can relate to that something in a personal way. A tennis player can write, and make a good essay about tennis, while an inmate serving 120 years for assault, can easily write an essay about it even if he never finished high school. Hamlet is the story about death, and a mixed series of revengeful actions. This practically defines the lives of a lot of the inmates making it, not easier, but more realistic when the time comes to act.

Having criminals playing as criminals allows us to understand them better as well as the play. For one, by interviewing a man who took someone's life, it is easier to figure out what has happening in the mind of someone like Cornelius. These inmates show what it is like to take another man's life and then having to live with the aftermath of those actions until their life is over. By interviewing them, it's the same as if talking to the real Hamlet who was at one point dying for revenge.

The best thing about having inmates to meet is their variety. This means that every inmate has at least one available idea to every part of Hamlet's speeches. Hamlet questions if he is truly the one that has to kill his uncle and live with the idea of taking the life of another man. There is an inmate for that. If Hamlet is just raging in love for Ophelia, there is an inmate for that. And even when Hamlet has killed and is suffering for the remainder of his life in agony, there is an inmate for that.

There was one inmate that caught my attention that decided to relate himself to Cornelius. He had taken a man's life, and he described it as "the ghost of Hamlet's father was speaking to me through the pages." This meant that he had killed him before his time had come, and he was therefore forced to live in another world, and look at the things happening not being able to do a thing about it. That is what made him a criminal: having stopped someone's life before he was done living, and therefore altering the natural course of the actions that could have made the dead man far more useful in the world.

The last thing that caught my attention was the idea that the inmates have to show their light side if they want to act in the play. The first reason is that this play relates to them so much, that even though they can act it out as a tough person, they will have to lighten up if they want to actually understand it and reflect upon it in order to get themselves thinking about themselves as part of the play. Second, this is a play that they are acting in. They're not stealing, or killing anything, and they will have to lighten up once again (which is not necessarily hard since most of them actually have a family and are used to it).

Having people acting as themselves makes the play more realistic than if any other actor did it. It means that they can grow as they do this, and experience something that will help them come out a little more "sober". That is, if they ever come out.

Straight to the Point

Many people, when reading Hamlet, come across the idea that he is either insane, or just faking his actions to get people fooled. But very few people will think that he is irrational as George Santayana describes it. This means that Hamlet simply overreacted with the idea of revenge. But, it is well known that the first instinct of a person is to to think of avenging the death of a loved one. So instead of calling it irrational, I would call it sudden.

Now, Santayana's essay points out every one of Hamlet's mistakes that eventually sent him to his death. The big one that caught my attention was "he acts without reflection, as he reflects without acting." Now, applying this to the situation in the play where he invites everyone to his self made play, it is pretty obvious that he did not think the whole way through before going in to demonstrate that Cornelius was actually a murderer. The exact opposite applies to when he meets the ghost of his father for the first time. Whether he was actually insane, or faking, it took him a good while to finally deliver the strike to send the king out of power.

Taking a similar character like Laertes, there is a strong opposition seen. Laertes makes no hesitation in going for Hamlet for revenge. The only thing that stops him is the soothing hand of the king that reminds him that the time to strike will come. And Laertes is proof that Hamlet is not exactly sane: The first reflex for most people when they find that a loved one is gone, is simply revenge. Hamlet does feel this, but does not go like crazy to strike at Cornelius. This could either mean that he has gone completely mad, or that he is being clever about what move he wants to make in his game. This explains his constant talk with the excuse that he is just waiting for the right time and Shakespeare can't have him do nothing until that time comes.

Trying to explain a lack of action, or a very sudden action of a character is like explaining to the teacher why you didn't do your blogs in time...... But the best excuse (which is still pretty fake) is to say that he was waiting for the right time.

What we See and Don't See

It is true that Shakespeare has a unique form of seeing things in order to get the audience to wonder. Samuel Coleridge chooses to try to figure out what Shakespeare tries to do as he writes the plays. In his passage, he directs his attention to the difference between the real world, and the world that is being done in the play. He chooses to think that Shakespeare not only tries to put his audience into the world, but to put them in the shoes of one of the characters.

Now, Coleridge argues that Hamlet is an exception to this due to the continual talk. Hamlet has several talks to himself in front of the audience where he will talk about his position, and will allow the audience to make their own judgements on how he should think. The most famous of them all is "To be or not to be" (III.i.) where he question whether he should live or die in this situation. It is particularly strong since most of the audience have experienced this sort of feeling where they have considered the idea to say goodbye to life and just die. Now, since this play is easily misinterpreted, Shakespeare could very well be calling the audience a crowd of crazy people. Since there is a very high chance that Hamlet may be crazy, and having this talk that is so similar to one that most of the audience has experienced, he begins to actually question the meaning of being crazy.

That is where Coleridge's theory of balance between the real world and the world of the play comes in. Shakespeare drags in the audience to the shoes of one of the characters by giving them something they can apply to their own lives and experience a little of that "crazy" Hamlet already has flowing in his veins. Though people will argue that this sort of thing has been done before, the fact remains that never has any sort of writer come in to give real life experiences so vividly as William Shakespeare.