Second half of Act 2, Scene 2. I know that I said that I'd be faster. It's just so hard to brush past some of this stuff. The business here is all about acting/performing.
First, Hamlet performs for Polonius, turning him around, making fun of him, throwing in a little craziness... Then he's with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and acts pretty normal. Then the players/actors show up. Hamlet performs a speech, gets the first player to finish it. Then, finally, we get him alone for the magnificent soliloquy that begins "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I."
It's the first time that we see him alone after he announces that he's going to start acting crazy. Here's the thing though: he's upset because the first player acted so upset about Hecuba, and Hamlet hasn't acted all that upset about all the stuff that he should be upset about. So, even when we see him alone, where he shouldn't be acting, he's using an actor to whip himself up into a passion that he isn't just naturally feeling.
From now on, we always have to think about which layer of reality we're looking at. Hamlet's going to have the players perform a play that shows something very similar to how Claudius killed Old Hamlet. Hamlet is writing one of the scenes of this play. At the same time, Hamlet is acting crazy.
Just think about it.
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