Mirror of Nature: Shakespeare's Theatrical Project in Hamlet

Often today, we learn Shakespeare as literature rather than theater. This has certainly been the case in my own education. We forget, however, that during Shakespeare's career, his contemporary, Ben Johnson, was censured for presuming to publish his 'playes' as 'workes' of literature. Shakespeare was a professional playwright, and his venue was the theater, not the press (although his plays were eventually published). A look at the theatrical world of Shakespeare's day enables us to appreciate his work on more levels that we can if we only read his plays as literature. Additionally, it opens our eyes to a better understanding of Shakespeare's artistic project on the whole.

Shakespeare is a very self-conscious playwright, as it turns out. His works are full metatheatrical and theatrically self-aware moments, and Hamlet is a prime example. Certain lines of the play can only be fully appreciated in light of their original theatrical context. The theater business of Elizabethan and Jacobean London consisted of theater companies which would perform frequently for regular audiences. Like the movie industry today, the public was typically more familiar with the actors than with particular plays. Plays were made popular by the actors who stared in them, such as Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn, who popularized Hamlet and Tamberlain, respectively (Burbage and Alleyn were lead actors of the rival theater companies, Lord Chamberlain’s Men and Admiral’s Men, who held a duopoly in the London theater business).

In Hamlet, Shakespeare capitalizes on his audience’s familiarity with the cast to make a metatheatrical joke that is actually extremely relevant to the play’s plot. It is found in Act three, Scene two:

HAMLET: [TO POLONIUS] MY LORD, YOU PLAYED ONCE I’TH’ UNIVERSITY, YOU SAY?
POLONIUS: THAT I DID, MY LORD, AND WAS ACCOUNTED A GOOD ACTOR.
HAMLET: AND WHAT DID YOU ENACT?
POLONIUS: I DID ENACT JULIUS CAESAR. I WAS KILLED I’TH’ CAPITOL. BRUTUS KILLED ME.

While this comment might seem irrelevant to the modern reader, Shakespeare’s audience would have recognized that John Hemmings, who acted the part of Polonius, had also acted the part of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which would have been performed not long before Hamlet (G.R. Hibbard suggests that the two plays were in the company’s repertory at the same time: 1599-1601). Additionally, Richard Burbage, who played Hamlet, had also played the Brutus who killed Caesar, played by Hemmings. In a subtle way, Polonius/Hemmings is foretelling his own death at the hands of Hamlet/Brutus/Burbage. Through theatrically self-conscious references such as these, Shakespeare is reminding his audience that they are sitting in a theater, watching actors. This awareness gets right to the heart of Shakespeare’s project in Hamlet (one of the projects, at least; Hamlet addresses multiple big topics).

In Hamlet, Shakespeare is exploring the nature of acting and theater, and how theater functions as a form of art, representation, expression, and communication. It features a play within a play, and a whole speech instructing players how to act. The whole play is rife with the language of action, performance, speech, authenticity, disguise and perception. In his own actions, Hamlet puts on a deceptive performance of madness, and on stage, he presents a revealing representation of his uncle's sin. Hamlet exhorts his players to act authentically on stage:

SUIT THE ACTION TO THE WORD, THE WORD TO THE ACTION, WITH THIS SPECIAL OBSERVANCE, THAT YOU NOT O'ERSTEP NOT THE MODESTY OF NATURE. FOR ANYTHING SO OVERDONE IS FROM THE PURPOSE OF PLAYING, WHOSE END, BOTH AT THE FIRST AND NOW, WAS AND IS TO HOLD AS T'WERE, A MIRROR UP TO NATURE...

The power of this mirror to nature is manifest in the king’s (Claudius’) response to the play that catches his conscience by representing his guilt before his eyes, just as Hamlet had planned.

Later in the play, there is a discussion of action apart from the stage, when two grave-diggers wonder what incurs guilt in human action. "An act hath three branches," the grave-digger says, "it is to act, to do, and to perform." Each of these branches has a different level of authenticity, and hence a different degree of guilt. Shakespeare is getting his audience to question what is authentic action and what is performance, both on stage and off.

At a time when theater held a peculiar position in society, being on the one hand patronized by monarchs, and on the other, censured as a source of riot and indecency, Shakespeare is forcing theater-goers to consider the nature of theatricality and the way that theater communicates as an art form. This consideration of artistic form fits in with the broader thematic content of Hamlet, which wrestles with questions of speech, presentation, human action and guilt, and man’s ability to access and understand reality.

Sources of Historical Information:

Foaks, R.A. “Shakespeare’s Elizabethan Stages.” In Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History, Edited by Jonathan Bate and Russell Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespeare Company: 1594-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Hibbard’s Introduction to Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edited by G.R. Hibbard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Leggatt, Alexander. “The Companies and Actors.” In The Revels History of Drama in English. Edited by Cliford Leeck and T. W. Craik. Volume III: 1576-1613. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1975.

Thomson, Peter. Shakespeare’s Professional Career. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.