The Hamlet Project

One of the things I learned from my years in theatre education is how to shape the energy, mood and focus of a room full of people. There are stages when you want to excite them and stages when you want to calm them down and knowing when to employ these tactics was one of the most useful kinds of learning I got.
Bring them up. Bring them down. Open it out, Rein it back in. That sort of manipulation is kind of necessary for a group of disparate individuals to have a good experience. I don’t think I’d ever manipulate a person that way, though. It would not occur to me to do so.
But that appears to be exactly what Claudius seems to be doing to Laertes, throughout this pair of scenes. Claudius placates, quiets, calms Laertes – then stirs him up – then once he’s seen that he’s stirred him up, he calms him down again. He’s like “What are you going to do?” and Laertes is like “Kill him in Church!” and once they’ve got the whole hyped up plan in place, Claudius is like, “Let’s take a second to plan.” Up, down, in, out.