Pinned
The Final Problem Explainer, Part I
Imagine Hamlet is a real person. Someone makes a documentary, a reality TV show, about this real person, Hamlet. The person you see on the screen is real Hamlet; you watch him living his real life. The only filter between you (the viewer) and Hamlet’s life is the editor of the show, who arranges the documentary-style footage into a legible story.
Now imagine William Shakespeare writes a play. Hamlet. This play, Hamlet, dramatizes the doings of the real person, Hamlet. Imagine in this scenario that the character Hamlet is played by Real Hamlet. You’re not watching Hamlet live his real life, but you’re watching him act out a version of some things similar to things he has previously done in his real life. Some things have been edited or embellished for artistic or dramatic purposes. You could even imagine, for the purpose of this exercise, that Shakespeare is not the playwright at all, that the true playwright is Horatio, real friend of real Hamlet. After all, we see the fictional Horatio who declares his intent in the final moments of Hamlet to “speak to the yet unknowing world/How these things came about”. Perhaps Shakespeare is only Horatio’s literary agent.
Now imagine, centuries later, Tom Stoppard writes a play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. This play is yet another degree of remove from Real Hamlet; it is a play about Hamlet. It is a play about a play about the real person Hamlet. It isn’t simply theatrical fan-fiction, though. The purpose of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is specifically to illustrate the vast gulf between viewing authentic first-hand footage in a documentary of the life of Real Hamlet, and viewing a post-hoc dramatization of it. The purpose of this play is to deconstruct the theatrical illusion of reality. The purpose of this play is to expose the inherent limits of a fiction.
When you watch Hamlet, your mind uses the implications and suggestions of the text to fill in the spaces between scenes and create a fully realized world that these characters continuously inhabit when out of view. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, using the same medium of theatre, strips this illusion away.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this analogy in regards to BBC Sherlock.
