They All Want to Play Hamlet
They All Want to Play Hamlet - meaning Summary
Desire to Enact Tragedy
Sandburg’s poem reflects on why people are drawn to perform Hamlet despite lacking the play’s specific tragedies. It argues that actors—and by extension anyone—are attracted to the role because of its concentrated sadness, theatrical gestures, and eloquent grief. The poem suggests a self-aware desire: performers know they are acting and that their empathy is partial, yet they still crave the intensity of standing with a skull and voicing profound sorrow.
Read Complete AnalysesThey all want to play Hamlet. They have not exactly seen their fathers killed nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill, nor an Ophelia lying with dust gagging the heart, not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders, not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers— O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl— in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare ever wrote; Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then to say over slow and over slow wise, keen, beautiful words asking the heart that's breaking, breaking, This is something that calls and calls to their blood. They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.
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