His Hour Upon the Stage

     The greatness of Shakespeare's tragedies lies in the fact that within a few hours time a character is born, lives his or her life, and dies, all in view of the audience.  The audience is a group of strangers unknown to the character, perhaps unfeeling at first yet by the end hopefully moved by what they have just experienced.  Hamlet perhaps has longer than others (his play being around 4 hours depending on cuts) but that serves to give us an even greater glimpse into his mind as he struggles to find his place in an absurd universe.  Perhaps the quote that best sums up my love of Hamlet comes from a different Shakespeare play altogether:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player | That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale | Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

     Hamlet both fulfills and refutes this passage.  He (or the actor portraying him) indeed "struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more" and yet for some reason we keep coming back to this tale, looking for a significance that the above passage would assure us it does not have.  Given this blank stage with emptiness before it and emptiness after what keeps us looking?  We search for meaning throughout Hamlet's life as we do our own, striving always to give ourselves narrative where there may indeed be none.

     What makes Hamlet so well suited to this purpose is his famous introspection.  He likewise spends the entire play searching for a meaning to his life that he can never quite seem to grasp.  Thus both character and audience examine what it is to live, want, fail, and die both alone and with each other.

     To go even further, throughout the play Hamlet turns away from the audience and consults his own characters and heroes, searching for meaning in the lives of legends such as Julius Caesar, Alexander, and Priam.  If the purpose of theater is "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature" then Hamlet shows us an image of ourselves as audience, looking for meaning both inside and out, struggling to discern a purpose we hope for but are not sure that we will find.

     That is why I love Hamlet.