And yet, we the audience are NOT the yet unknowing world. We are part of the knowing world. We just watched this play and everything Horatio is offering up, we have already seen. There is a kind of circularity to the play. At the beginning, we WERE part of the unknowing world. We had not yet seen what led to the deaths of these people. We were so unknowing, we did not even know they would die. In a way, this invocation of the unknowing world is an invocation of our earlier selves.
I know some hot shot director has started his production with the bodies on the stage and Fortinbras and the English ambassador coming in like – oh, whoa, what happened here and Horatio tells them, I’ll tell you the story and then the whole thing starts from the beginning. I’ve never seen it done – but I feel very confident that someone has tried it. Whether it worked or not is another question, I’m sure but I’d bet a lot of money on SOMEONE trying it.
The Hamlet Project 