From Harold Bloom’s Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, one of his six(?) book-length essays on individual characters – the others being dedicated to Cleopatra, Falstaff, Iago, Lear, and Macbeth. Bloom throughout his Shakespeare-centered works always complains about performance quality – and modern performances especially – so I appreciate finding that he somewhere gave an indication of what he’d wish.
A “poem unlimited” should be the greatest of entertainments, but I have yet to see Hamlet performed, on screen or stage, as extravagantly as it should be done. I hasten to stammer, “No! I don’t mean Hamlet the musical!” What is wanted is a director and an actor who are monsters of consciousness, and who can keep up with that true combat of mighty opposites, Hamlet and Shakespeare. In such a death duel, I would want the actor to side with Shakespeare, and the director to favor Hamlet. Let the actor underplay, even as he is overdirected.
As audience, we thus will confront a protagonist and a director in dubious battle, but that should help emphasize that everything in the play that is not Hamlet himself is peculiarly archaic. The actor will imply continuously that he has been dropped into the wrong play, yet feels it will do as badly, or as well, as any other, while the director will maintain pressure to evidence that Hamlet is far too good for this antique vehicle, which could wheeze along with just a commonplace hero (or hero-villain) at the center.
Extracts 