ABSTRACT
In the first volume of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s An Actor’s Work on Himself he cites Ophelia’s speech, wherein she confides to Polonius that Hamlet’s strange, nonverbal behavior has frightened her. She recalls:
He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arm, And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so; At last, a little shaking of mine arm And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound That it did seem to shatter all his bulk And end his being: that done, he lets me go, And with his head over his shoulder turn’d He seem’d to find his way without his eyes, For out o’ doors he went without their helps, And to the last bended their light on me.
