Gorfain's essay addresses elements of Carnival in Hamlet , and Montrose's chapters help us consider how the play may have figured in Elizabethan and Jacobean discourses about theatre and anti-theatricality. For your position paper, choose a section of the play to discuss in terms of how it might have spoken to its own audiences about powers (or dangers) of playing, theatre, pretense, madness, and license, how it might have appealed to their pleasures in subversion and needs for social critique through play, or how it might have alarmed authority. Or, discuss how some particular section of the play might now speak to audiences in our place and time about the powers (or dangers) of playing, theatre, pretense, madness, a carnivalesque vision and license.
How do issues in the play concerning play, theatre, madness, license, carnival seem to have relevance to concerns that might be powerful to address in any particular time period or culture?