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In the course of this play Hamlet repeatedly attempts to bring himself to the point where he can commit murder; these attempts involve him in using language to organise his view of the world.
He often feels a failure in this, in that the very language he is using opens up ambiguous possibilities, instead of revealing for him a clear road ahead.
Critics have found the same alluring problem in studying the play - more has been written about it than any other work of literature - and the more they think and write about Hamlet the more they open up undiscovered literary, theatrical and even philosophical possibilities and contradictions.
Many students of the play will see this production: I am sure some of them will also be going through the fascinating and frustrating experience I have described above.
A theatre company also has to wrestle with this problem.
Actors have to decide at some level what they mean when they say something - even if their character is deceiving himself or unaware of all of the possibilities of meaning implicit in his words; we have to fight the battle to find meaning, even though we know that we cannot wholly win it.
Much of what has been written has concentrated on why Hamlet delays in killing Claudius - and he certainly does delay.
In the theatre ( I hope!) this delay does not extend to the point of boring the audience - indeed the delay is what makes the play live.
For myself, I feel we shall not have failed if our 1999 audience - after a century which saw a relentless continuiation of the violence which man inflicts on man in spite of our having arrived at the "end of history" - in their hearts sympathise with the delay of a man who is not convinced in his heart that revenge is a good idea. Stephen Hartford