The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - Brossura

Critics have long called Hamlet a problematic, difficult, even undramatic play. Shakespeare appears less interested in conventional plot development, or even character development of minor characters, and instead focuses on a specific theme: the difficulty of action, the corruption of the soul and of the world, and eternal consequences. But for all that Hamlet is one of the most theatrical and self-conscious of Shakespearean plays. The play-within-a-play is but the most obvious example of how Shakespeare removes the actors from the audience. Hamlet is "meta" in the same way much early 21st Century culture is frequently so: we are constantly called to remember that the action on the stage is not real, that the actors are merely reciting lines in some larger drama. ---from the Introduction to this edition