Oh, The Silence!

In David Tennant’s version of Act III we encounter Hamlet’s long, emotive soliloquy, acted in such a way that we are immersed in each word, in every pause, in the silence evoked by our questions. Tennant appears leaning on a wall, as if trying to look for any kind of help, of company, of support. We are asked to perceive Hamlet’s dilemma as the dilemma of humankind, to believe in the suffering of the human mind when it searches for a distant, complex answer, that answer which will determine our future. Tennant glares at the future to come, at the results and consequences of the decisions he will make, without any confidence, without assertiveness.

The actor ponders for a full ten seconds after delivering Shakespeare’s most famous line, until he states: “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And, by opposing, end them” (Act III, Scene i). Tennant’s face, illumined by a distant light, looking upwards reflects the individual’s solemnity when pondering such a question, to decide whether to act or not to, to be partial in such a matter as one’s father’s assassination, to be able to live with the suffering or act upon it, end the farce. This question, the question of taking action, becomes more and more important as life progresses. The impossibility of changing the past, of having to live the consequences and results of our decisions, makes the process of such a task as decision-making fundamental in our quest for happiness.

By choosing something we are thus opposing the other choice, deciding to terminate a whole new set of new realities and possibilities. I think it is very interesting how Shakespeare chooses the word being, instead of acting for Hamlet’s first soliloquy line. Such a decision probably reflects how our choices are reflected in what we become, in the be part of living and deciding, not in the act itself. Considering how language must be a tool for a writer, not an enemy, explains how we must understand this question in its overwhelming expression, its huge umbrella-like display, as the question that understands all questioning, as the question that creates all questioning.