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Examples Of Mimeti In Hamlet

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Hamlet is nearer to the narrator in a play of Chikamatsu than to a chorus. Yet, he is different from both. Unlike them, he is an intruder. He speaks to the players from the outside of the play and speaks to the audience from the inside of the play. In this sense, he is alien to both. He is a narrator, a wielder of Lexis. Unlike the chorus, he is a single person with a voice of his own. Furthermore, unlike the narrator in the Japanese puppet theatre, he is visible. Unlike both, Hamlet seems to impose his story both on the players and on the audience. In this sense, his subjectivity intrudes on the illusion of objective representation. By speaking to the player, he violates one of the conventions of dramatic representation, the illusion of the fourth wall. This fourth wall keeps another illusion in the mind of the audience. We may call this kind of illusion the …show more content…

We know that many actors being famous for such or such a role become confused with the character they once represented. On stage, as on the screen, the actor’s self is absent to make present the character’s self. This absence secures the illusion of identification between the character and the actor. This identification is not a one-way process. Indeed, as the actor acquires the name, the words and the acts of the character, s/he gives him/her his/her physical features (appearance, voice, etc.). This applies also to theatrical props and other theatrical devices. Narration, on the contrary, does not provide for such illusions. Oral narration, nevertheless, retains a certain amount of theatricality. Yet, unlike theater, it relies not on the illusion of presence, but on the illusion of continuity. The Ghost of Hamlet is a case in point. He needs the theatrical art of assuming not to reproduce presence but to reproduce continuity. In this light, we may read the Ghost’s "remember me"(Hamlet, I, v, 91.) as indicative of this urge of

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