Hamlet

Hamlet is the most written-about book, after the Bible. Many find in it a “spacious mirror” in which their reflection confronts them. “Who’s there?” is the question cast into the dark night, at the very beginning of Shakespeare’s play. The Prince of Denmark’s story is the story of our own vacillation before that primeval question: “Who am I?” Consciousness/action, past/present, to be/not to be are the poles between which everything happens. Hamlet is the Western literature archetype about human consciousness. Desire for vengeance, deceit and duplication (the play-within-the-play sequence) fail to conceal the emptiness that corrodes the Prince. In W.H. Auden’s words: “Hamlet must define his existence in terms of others. Hence, his inability to act, for he can only “act”, i.e., play at possibilities.” Director Nuno Cardoso sets out to inquire into that blindness of oneself, a pathology of modern times.