Self-Consciousness In Hamlet

In the final scene of Hamlet, Hamlet says “Being thus be-netted round with villainies, -- Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, they had begun the play” (Shakespeare 131). Hamlet ironically thinks to himself as a character in a play because he is so melodramatically self-conscious. By adding this sense of paradoxical exposure, Shakespeare shows his effort to foreground the fact that the audience is watching a play within the play. Since Hamlet is such a rich character, Shakespeare’s work shows how he has something within him goes beyond what a play is capable of representing. This leads to a tension between the superficial reality of Hamlet’s awareness and the endless cues that he is a walking shadow. This metaphor is similarly mentioned in Macbeth, meaning a walking, or strutting, shadow, or a trivial character who overplays his way thorough the play but is not notable, and departs to never be heard from again. For Hamlet, this leads to plenty of considerations.

Second, one’s self-consciousness decides whether or not the character is considered “theatrical”. Hamlet’s continuous deliberation for theatricality is part of his tragedy. He thinks of himself as a character of a play and always feels compelled to do something because of the influence the ghost of his father holds upon him. Conclusively, Hamlet’s self-consciousness implies that internal freedom can be attained when the he can separate his intelligence for intensifying his mindfulness from his own precarious passion for pure