“I don't really agree with the idea of ​​setting the plays in any particular place. When I'm asked this question about Hamlet, I tend to say that the story took place on stage. » - Neil Armfield1. No other quote about Shakespeare's Hamlet could have more accurately summed up the play's echoing, reverberating, haunting self-referential quality. No other playwright has deployed the language, conventions and resources of theater so effectively, so as to bring the entire world of the text/stage alive in the world of the audience. This connection between the storyline on the page and the storyline performed in Shakespeare leads to a plurality of meanings and meanings for the play. Ian McKellan, in John Barton's Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide, rightly asserts this connection: "Perhaps it is because Shakespeare himself was an actor that he so often uses the metaphor of the actor and theater in his plays. Often, when a character is at the height of their emotional problems, they compare themselves to an actor: "strutting and worrying during their hour on stage." It has a wonderful resonance for an audience...” Thus, it is clear that Hamlet is a play that engages with the paradigm of “play” and the various acts that flow from it. These would include the notion of "play" itself, the centrality of "play" in the play, the simultaneous power of "play" and the threat it generates, and the fine line of separation between "play" in the play and the play and play and reality. As frustrating and confusing as the above may seem, this particular phase of Hamlet has intrigued and fascinated literary critics, academics, theater enthusiasts, drama critics, critics, and the plebeian alike. of paper......Directions. Ed. Hardin L. Aasand. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2003. Hunt, Maurice. “Art of judgment, art of compassion: the two arts of Hamlet. » Literary Essays 18. 1991. Malone, Cynthia Northcutt. “Framing in Hamlet.” College literature 18.1. February 1991. McGuire, Philip C. “Carrying a Watchful Eye: Playful Revenge and Dubious Suicide in Hamlet.” » From page to performance: essays on early English drama. Ed. John Alford. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1995. Motohashi, Tetsuya. “The room is the thing. . . you're welcome': Writing and 'freedom' in Hamlet." Hamlet and Japan. Ed. Yoshiko Ueno. Hamlet Collection 2. New York: AMS, 1995. Wagner, Joseph B. “Hamlet Rewrites Hamlet.” Hamlet Studies 23. 2001. Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in The Norton Shakespeare, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York and London: WW Norton. 1997.