In this soliloquy, Hamlet ponders the meaning of acting, the mystery of belief – that an actor has to so completely believe the imaginary circumstances, that real tears will fall, etc. I know this soliloquy by heart. Most actors do.
Is it monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in ‘s aspect
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.
— Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
My first acting teacher, when one of us would be having trouble connecting to a scene, making it real for ourselves, whatever – all he would say was:
“What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba that he should weep for her?”
In acting parlance, that means: make it real. Get specific, and make it real.
