Roles Of Acting In Hamlet

Hamlet, in his speech provides the idea of role playing and provides the audience with the dilemma he faces with regard to the course of action or inaction available to him. As such, acting takes a great part of the play as shown by the various situations where acting is discussed and used to fulfill various functions for the play. As the most important figure in the course of the play, Hamlet provides an example for acting in different levels. Further, Hamlet’s character is played by an actor, which provides the first level of pretense in addition to his character playing different roles, thereby constituting the second level of acting. Hamlet is presented as the son of the murdered king as well as an observer of the things surrounding him, which prompt him to hesitantly use these events for own benefit.
Moreover, acting plays a crucial role in the play’s scheme since Hamlet himself as a character initiates a play-within-a-play to unmask Claudius as well as his own mother. He plays director and at the same time he is the audience to his own play, hence providing the reader with the third level of acting, otherwise known as meta-level. Additionally, acts as a madman to provide himself with room to achieve his goals thereby ending up
Further, to care and defend against the feelings of uncertainty, Hamlet builds a wall of acting and thus freeing himself behind the veil. One can say that Hamlet’s decisions are human since no individual wants to harm themselves as it serves to protect him from the loss of his father in ghost’s form. Therefore, playacting is a crucial device in the play and serves as a moment of nihilism and a form of art which give Hamlet consistency throughout the play (Shakespeare, Seely and Elliott 2000, 56). Once Hamlet gives up acting at the end of the play, he both succeeds and fails as shown by the killing of Laertes and Hamlet