Hamlet

Hamlet is Sartre’s example of how a dramatic character can appear through a living performer without being confused with the performer’s real identity. The actor’s body and emotions provide the Analogon through which Hamlet is presented, while the character belongs to an irreal world rather than becoming a real person inside the actor.

Hamlet as a dramatic figure

Sartre places Hamlet within a general account of fiction, poetry, and drama: dramatists constitute irreal objects through verbal Analogons, and an actor playing Hamlet makes his whole body serve as an Analogon for that imaginary person. Hamlet is therefore present through the performance, but does not exist as a real person in the actor or in the surrounding world. The stage figure is apprehended through a real human performance while remaining irreal.

The actor’s embodied performance

The actor does not posit that he is Hamlet in the Realizing attitude. That distinction, however, does not mean he is detached from the role or fails to commit himself to it. He mobilizes all his feelings, strength, and gestures to present Hamlet’s feelings and conduct. In doing so, he irrealizes these real resources: they function as signs of the character’s life rather than as evidence that the actor has literally become Hamlet.

Tears and the paradox of acting

Sartre uses the actor’s tears to reconcile two apparently opposed accounts of performance: that actors do not believe in their characters, and that actors can be deeply taken by the roles they play. The actor may really cry, yet he and the audience apprehend those tears as Hamlet’s—as Analogons of irreal tears. The performer can thus be wholly gripped by the character without positing the character as real. Sartre’s formulation reverses the apparent direction of transformation: Hamlet is not realized in the actor; the actor is irrealized in Hamlet.