Staging violence in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: From the theatrics of the mind, the image and the stage to the creation of the meta-self

Abstract

Violence in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet follows stage-managed theatrics at the level of the language and images used, the construction of a theatre that comments on theatre, and of staged minds. The theatrics of images, sound, stage and mind are necessary steps for Hamlet to create a meta-self. Metatheatre and the grotesque are deeply connected to violence; their association makes what the research calls the meta-self. The article combines different theoretical concepts not commonly used simultaneously. The alliance between the carnivalesque and the metatheatrical reveals the theatrics of the stage while dealing with violence. The theatrics of violence are present at the level of performance, language and images. The dynamics of violence constructed upon theatrics and staging prove that the mind of Hamlet is staged. Baudrillard’s concepts of “hyperreality”, “traversing the self” and “holographic attempts” allow us to conclude that Hamlet reaches a “meta-self”. The Meta- self is a traversing self that challenges society and mocks over-confidence; it operates as a mirror, a crossing-thinking self in constant rehearsal and reassessment of the certitudes of humans.