Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
It is common to describe the end product of an actor's labour as ‘an interpretation’, but somehow the expression's serious, critical dimension is never fully intended. Only a scholar with his pipe and tweeds would seem to possess the appropriate gravity to render judicious overviews of this kind. When one wants to know what Hamlet is ‘about’, they naturally turn to heavily footnoted exegesis found in periodicals with circulations under a thousand. What could someone prancing before a number greater than this in a single evening, wearing grease paint and tights no less, possibly add to such an exalted investigation?