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Hamlet's Mind-Game The Suspension Of Disbelief And The Fictional Reality Analysis

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Hamlet’s Mind-Game, the Suspension of Disbelief and the Fictional Reality
William Shakespeare composed in 1601 the play Hamlet, Prince of Denmark which was considered as a masterpiece at the time and it is still considered as one till the present time. The reason for the great attraction of the play lies in Shakespeare 's unique writing techniques. In these writing methods he elevates the language from its fundamental facility to a level in which the language transfers from its abstract notion to a degree when it becomes materialized for the audience. Therefore, in Hamlet prince of Denmark, the audience in the theater experiences the elaboration of the words from its complex or intangible meaning into a material form; thus a form that is more …show more content…

Shakespeare opens the play with the words of Bernardo: "Who 's there?" which apparently triggers the ghost of the late king to appear. Provided that, it seems that a question which is being pronounced in the present times causes the former king 's ghost to appear; hence, a connection between the present time and the past is being created, by doing so Shakespeare states that the play operates on different levels of time all correlated together. At the same time, with the use of these words Shakespeare illustrates that in the play everything has more than one meaning; thus, it is clearly considered as fiction when Shakespeare writes the words "Who 's there?", and it is a real occasion when these words are pronounced by the actor in the play. Support to this claim could be found in Amy Cook 's essay "Staging Nothing: Hamlet and Cognitive Science" where she explains the subject of theater 's blend of fiction and reality: "Onstage everything is a hybrid: part representation, part the thing itself. When Shakespeare writes: "Who 's there?" it is a fiction; when the actor says it onstage, it is partially fiction and partially a real question asked by a real man asked in a real situation". For this reason, it seems that the actor has a complex status which is derived from the fact that he is in a complex status, because he finds himself in a complex status where the reality and the fiction are mixed together. This status gives the actor exceptional power, a power to make the audience produce real emotions from witnessing the

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