1 COMPAKATIVE i ama Volume 21Winter 1987-88Number 4 Hamlet's Bloody Thoughts and the Illusion of Inwardness Susan Baker Centrally, Hamlet seeks the right relation between thought and action. Thematically, so does Hamlet. That the prince and the play share this vexed obsession accounts for critical efforts to locate the play's lineaments in some branch of philosophy. But there are more things in heaven and earth and on stage than are dreamt of in our philosophies, and questions about the intricate relationships between thought and action, inner word and outer deed, belong as much to dramaturgy as to intellectual inquiry. For a playwright to create the illusion of a character's having an inward and pre-existing consciousness, implicit thoughts for that character must be—quite literally—embodied. (I use thought here to signal idea, perception, motive, anxiety, desire, memory—the entire province of human inwardness, including the buried vault of the unconscious.) In drama, every thought and every attendant word must be expressed physically, by the reverberation of a particular set of vocal cords or, perhaps , by the gesture of a particular arm. Drama is the fleshly SUSAN BAKER is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada. She has previously published articles on Shakespeare and Webster. Currently she is coediting an anthology of feminist perspectives on Renaissance drama, and has recently completed a book on Shakespeare and the representation of interiority. 303 304Comparative Drama genre, and the central dramaturgical fact is embodiment. Nowhere is that fact more explicit or more elusive than in Hamlet, the play that has elicited more speculation about a fictive character's inner life—more attempts at mind-reading— than any other. This speculation is not fortuitous; it arises both from the presence of several soliloquies, which seduce us into feeling we can know an inward Hamlet, and from the persistent efforts of those around Hamlet to pluck out the heart of his mystery, to fathom his motives, to read his mind. Hamlet specifically raises the question of how interiority may be represented on stage, and attention to Hamlet's dramaturgical strategies will enlarge our understanding of Shakespeare's own strategies for embodying the implied consciousness of his protagonist , for fostering the illusion of inwardness,i Critics have commented extensively on the parallels between Hamlet's two self-scolding soliloquies, in Act II, scene ii, and Act IV, scene iv. In the first of these, the player's tears move Hamlet to indict himself as "a rogue and peasant slave," a "John-a-dreams," a whore who "unpack[s] [his] heart with words" (H.ii.550, 568, 585).2 Similarly, at the end of IV.iv, the encounter with the Norwegian Captain occasions Hamlet's comparison of his own inaction with Fortinbras' willingness to "find quarrel in a straw" (IV.iv.55). These two speeches resemble each other in more than motive and reproach, however . Both end on a note of rhymed resolve: "The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King" (II.ii.60405 ); "From this time forth/ My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth" (IV.iv.65-66). I believe that these resolutions are essentially identical; moreover, their obvious parallels encourage us to hold the first in mind as we respond to the second. Both announce the same dramaturgical strategy, one that will govern inferences about Hamlet's inner life, particularly about the sea change he seems to undergo between Acts IV and V. The intent of the first resolution is obvious: Hamlet plans to stage a play that will shock Claudius into revealing his guilt. That is, through theatrical representation, Claudius will be forced to see embodied his secret thoughts, to witness reenacted deeds he has assumed could be known to—could be thought by—only his own conscience or consciousness.3 The point of Hamlet's play strategem is not that the murder once happened but rather Sitian Baker305 that, in Claudius' mind, it still happens, still is being thought. If the outer form of action matches the inner form of the King's conscience, Hamlet as spectator will be able to "read" Claudius' mind. As playwright and director, Hamlet...