In the end of Act 2, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet confesses that a skilled actor crying to an imaginary ‘Hecuba’ better emulated sorrow than Hamlet felt it. This reaches at a core concept in the study of aesthetics: how real is art? Throughout his soliloquy, Hamlet expresses language that reveals his obsession with artifice and his struggle for authenticity, for reality. Indeed, his plan to discover if Claudius truly murdered his father is rooted in this idea of artifice becoming reality. He laments that the First Player’s passion for Hecuba-- a person neither of them ever met-- is more real than his own “motive and… cue for passion” (Hamlet 2.2.588), indicating that he believes the emotions of artifice can overtake real emotions. Hamlet argues that the emotions of artistic artifice are fundamentally more powerful than genuine emotions, which is reinforced by the language of his soliloquy.

 

The key aspect of art in Hamlet is that it elevates secondary experiences. Secondary experiences are events or emotions that, while no one in living memory has experienced them, are accessible via art or historical accounts, such as Hecuba’s reaction to the slaughter of Priam. On the other hand, primary experiences are things the present company has experienced firsthand, such as Hamlet’s loss of his father. Hamlet makes it clear that the special skills of the First Player have elevated the secondary experience of Priam’s death beyond that of the primary experience of his grief. Provided with his ‘motive and cue for passion’, Hamlet thinks this of the First Player:

 

“He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appall the free,

Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears”

(2.2.589-93)

 

This section of the soliloquy is rife with rich hyperbole, from ‘drown the stage’ to ‘cleave the general ear’ to ‘make mad’, all communicating Hamlet’s intensity and respect for theatre’s potential. Theatrical artifice assumes almost mythic qualities in Hamlet’s words; the rhetorical device of a list helps to reinforce the many great powers theatre has. It also reveals his cynicism, since the performance does not amaze the mind or soul, but rather the base “faculties of eyes and ears”. It is this immense artistic respect that Hamlet expresses throughout his monologue.

 

It stands to reason that Hamlet’s primary experience would be more emotionally potent than the First Player’s secondary experience, but Hamlet maintains that this is not so. He marvels that the First Player

 

“Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her [Hecuba’s] working all his visage wanned,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit”

(2.2.580-84).

 

It is by these devices that Hamlet perceives the First Player’s performance as efficacious, by his ‘tears in his eyes’, his ‘broken voice’, his ‘distracted aspect’ that are building blocks of the ‘forms to the Player’s conceit’. The technical terms ‘function’ and ‘forms’ lend this portion of the soliloquy a mathematical element, as if there is an equation to achieve a perfect conceit. Hamlet’s fawning over the First Player’s emotionality and his frustration with the fact that he himself is only a “John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,/And can say nothing… for a king/Upon whose property and most dear life/A damned defeat was made” (2.2.595-98). This stems from his insecurity, his perceived failure to achieve his perfect ‘conceit’. As we glean from how Hamlet insults himself with ‘John-a-dreams’ (a daydreamer)-- not to mention all the other self-debasing comments he makes throughout his soliloquy-- we can conclude that Hamlet judges his reality as inherently inferior to the actors’ make-believe.

 

This sense of inferiority is also shown earlier in Act 2 Scene 2. Hamlet debates with his friends the weight and import of dreams/ambitions, where Guildenstern raises an interesting point: what is the difference between a dream and an ambition? To Hamlet, not much:

 

“GUILDENSTERN: Which dreams, indeed, are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET: A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ: Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET: Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows”

(2.2.276-83).

 

Though Hamlet was originally discussing his literal dreams, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quickly move onto the metaphorical interpretation of dreams, and Hamlet never corrects them. Hamlet sees his dreams and ambitions to be worthless, massless objects, and those with lofty dreams (‘our monarchs and outstretched heroes’) are also worthless and massless compared to everyone else. In other words, Hamlet sees himself as all dreams and no substance. The word ‘monarch’ also informs us on Hamlet’s initial opinion about art; he considers the dreams of monarchs as ‘a shadow’s shadow’, iterations of iterations, and Hamlet views the First Player’s performance of the death of Priam-- the Trojan monarch-- as “all for nothing!” (2.2.584) because as discussed, it was a secondary experience. If we collate shadowy dreams and the artifice of the First Player’s portrayal of Priam, it can be concluded that Hamlet’s feelings on dreams and ambition align with his feelings on art and artifice. His lack of faith in the real-world concept of ambitions discloses a lack of faith in authentic reality.

 

However, in his monologue at the end of Act 2, Hamlet appears to doubt his earlier appraisal: “Is it not monstrous that this player here [the First Player],/But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,/Could force his soul so to his own conceit” (2.2.577-80). The specific term ‘dream’ refers back to Hamlet’s debate with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, invoking Hamlet’s disparaging take on ambition-- but from the loving tone he expresses about the First Player’s acting, Hamlet’s outlook on art has demonstrably changed. The notion that the abstract idea of a dream can translate into physical passion, forcing ‘his soul so to his own conceit’, transfixes Hamlet. ‘Soul’ introduces a spiritual element to the performance, as if every atom in the First Player’s body was devoted towards his art, that art could be so transformational. Hamlet’s reverent speech all but confesses that the First Player’s ‘dream of passion’ has mass and potency, pointing to the ‘tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect’ and other sundry tricks as the reason for this peculiar weight.

 

What separates Hamlet’s dreams and the First Player’s dreams is intentionality. While the First Player has had time to practice and hone the artifice of his act-- he recites it in the spur of the moment at Hamlet’s request, implying years of rehearsal-- Hamlet remains, in his mind, “A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, [peaking]/Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause” (2.2.594-95). The First Player’s effectiveness, born of intentionality, leads Hamlet to undermine his own conviction. The fluid, practiced way that the First Player communicated his heart clearly unnerves Hamlet, who curses that he “Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words” (2.2.614), that he must relegate such raw emotion to mere speech instead of the action of avenging his father. Thus, in his vengeful reverie, he vows to prove his uncle’s guilt via the idea that most fascinated him about the First Player: theatrical artifice.

 

That a play is the basis of Hamlet’s grand plan states that the First Player’s act has transfixed Hamlet to an extreme degree. He declares:

 

“I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have, by the very cunning of the scene,

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ”

(2.2.617-23).

 

Hamlet’s claim is not totally baseless-- the play succeeds in entrapping Claudius-- but it is verging on irrational. Recurring here is the spiritual language (‘struck to the soul’ and ‘miraculous’) Hamlet employs when discussing art, revealing his near-religious faith in the ‘cunning of the scene’, the artificial tools of ‘tears in eyes, distraction in aspects’ so beloved by the First Player.

 

Hamlet holds an underlying skepticism about reality. He could have gone with any other scheme to prove Claudius’ guilt; a simple confrontation would have likely procured similar results. The fact that he picks the play as his method tells us that on some level, Hamlet does not trust authentic reality. Hamlet must literally look through artifice to find the truth, as if the artifice of art is all he can count on. This skepticism shows in Hamlet’s explanation of why he needs to confirm his uncle’s crime at all:

 

“The spirit that I have seen

May be a devil, and the devil hath power

T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy…

Abuses me to damn me”

(2.2.627-32).

 

Skepticism is Hamlet’s defense mechanism against his ‘weakness and melancholy’, and it permeates everything he conceives, even the ghost of his own father. So, in a bizarre fashion, Hamlet clings to the one concept in his life that he knows is not real: art.

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How can something as inauthentic as theatre ever be as genuine as Hamlet believes it? Actors and artists adopt roles, just like the rest of the world. But they play those roles in the way they are supposed to be played, with intentionality and focus born of years of rehearsal. Hamlet’s logic in submitting to artifice is that he perceives himself as a ‘John-a-dreams’ impostor-- but if actors are pretending to be a person they are not, they have paradoxically stayed true to themselves. In Hamlet’s cruel court world of masks and deceit, of Polonius’ defamatory schemes and Claudius’ major intrigue, in the world of mundane dishonesty, the artifice of the theatre is the ‘realest’ thing in the world to him. It speaks to the corrupt, decadent environment of Denmark that Hamlet finds theatre more genuine. Thus it is the shadows of shadows, the secondary iterations, the airy reflections of a cultural consciousness that are the most whole and honest beings in Hamlet.

 

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Source:

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library, March 10, 2021. https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/