Cohen, Brent M. “‘What is it you Would See?’: Hamlet and the Conscience of the
Theatre.” ELH. 44.2 (1977): 222-247.

Polonius’ death force us, at least momentarily, to look at him from the outside. 224

The empty orchestra pit marks an ontological boundary between the audience and the stage, between consciousness and dreaming, that we must transgress in order to enter the world of the illusion, the quasi-sacred space in which we lose our known selves to find our nobler, truer selves. 226

The absence of such absolute boundaries in the Elizabethan theatre, however, includes us in the action without permitting our total absorption or abandonment of self-consciousness. 226

Our involvement, then, does not lead us to the edge of repose and dream, but, as Claudius’ address suggests, to a conflicted sense of our role in the action. Instead of losing ourselves in the exstasis of sympathetic identification, we remain possessed of our consciousness, or, in the synonymous Renaissance phrase used by Hamlet, caught by our ‘conscience.’ 227

Except for the abrupt reappearance of the Ghost in the Closet scene, Hamlet does not avail itself o the suggestion that some hovering divinity watches us watch the play, as Thomas Kyd does in The Spanish Tragedy, where the Ghost and Revenge sit on stage from beginning to end. 227

By making us aware of the theatre within the theatre, the play [Hamlet] creates a distance between the audience and its hero that does not abrogate our sympathy, but makes it ours to give, our responsibility once given.

In the theatre of the Players, Hamlet finds the conviction he lacks and the possibility of reclaiming a world of action lost to him outside the theatre. 231

Hamlet realizes that what has happened happened to an actor, not just to the character “Hecuba.” Hamlet’s complaint “What’s a Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba / That he should weep for her?” is a quite apt allusion to the art of the actor who not only brings feeling to his role (“he to Hecuba”) but whose own feelings are strengthened and developed by his role (“Hecuba to him”). To the extent that an actor internalizes his role, his performance may have resonances for him that cannot be expressed explicitly, that, in Hamlet’s words, “pass show.” 233

The consciousness of acting blocks Hamlet’s concentration within his role; ranting like a conventional stage revenger, his performance loses focus. Exasperated that by acting his passion, it has not gained conviction, Hamlet arranges a play in which he will not have to act and to which he can be a spectator vicariously reliving and recounting his motives for revenge. 240

but Hamlet himself never relinquishes the self-critical voice of the soliloquies with its privileged assumption that it does not come from the same place as the Hamlet it rebukes and accuses. But where, then, does it come from? Perhaps Hamlet discovers in the agonies of self-disavowal that in asserting his interiority to us, he is playing yet another role, which in the infinite regress of his self-reflection he in turn will have to disavow. 240

Direct address to the audience does not destroy the illusion. 241

Hamlet activates our instincts for revenge, but does not permit us to value their gratification. 243

In William Epson’s words, Shakespeare needed to satisfy an audience that “demanded a Revenge play, and then would laugh when it was provided.” 244

The staging of the past in Hamlet and the restaging of the earlier Hamlet suggest that the past of the audience has become its pastime, its entertainment. 244