Stay, Illusion! by Simon Critchley

Author:Simon Critchley [Critchley, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-90762-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-25T04:00:00+00:00

Like the play within the play, we access something as intimate as desire in a moment outside of ourselves—in a flash of identification with the other’s desire. As Hamlet says later of Laertes, “to know a man well were to know himself.” This is also the very structure of theater, both the theatricality of drama and the mise-en-scène of psychoanalysis.

But the travesty is that it does not hold. Hamlet cannot find a way to support his desire through this other, his double. Shortly after this proclamation, his love veers off as he turns to Laertes—“What wilt thou do for her?” The competition grows fierce, wild, and, one might even say, quite mad:

’Swounds, show me what thou’lt do.

Woo’t weep? Woo’t fight? Woo’t fast? Woo’t tear thyself?

Woo’t drink up eisel, eat a crocodile?

I’ll do’t. Dost thou come here to whine?

To outface me with leaping in her grave?

Be buried quick with her, and so will I.

And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw

Millions of acres on us, till our ground,

Singeing his pate against the burning zone,

Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou’lt mouth,

I’ll rant as well as thou.

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