in a variation upon the use of the fan, would instead havewith them a manuscript of the play to which Hamlet had added some
additional lines. Like the fan, this could be used as a means of
concealing the face, as a pointer, and, if gnawed upon or destroyed,
as an indication of Hamlet's extreme emotions. The second piece of
stage business went back to at least as early as Edmund Kean and
William Charles Macready and could still be seen at the end of the
nineteenth century, Sarah Bernhardt's performance providing an
example. It involved Hamlet crawling on the floor away from Ophelia
and towards Claudius as the scene progressed and the tension mounted.
At the climactic moment when Hamlet believes that Claudius displays
his guilt, Hamlet rises from
