The 'too solid/sullied flesh' speech is delivered during a freeze frame

In the original text of Hamlet, our titular protagonist delivers the ”O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt’ soliloquy once everyone has left the audience chamber and he is on his own.

In my opinion, performing the speech in this way as Shakespeare intended gives the impression that Hamlet has been emotionally holding himself together throughout the rest of the scene. Yes, he is arguably sarcastic and scornful in his responses to his mother and his uncle, particularly when he says ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’. However, there is nothing to suggest that Hamlet is on the brink of a mental breakdown until everyone leaves. It’s almost like he’s able to be stoic and calm with other people around.

This gives us the idea from very early on that Hamlet is able to perform for other people. He’s able to separate his internal reality from his external appearance, showing people only the parts of him that he wants them to see.

The fact that Hamlet only fully breaks down when he’s alone makes us question the extent of his mental health problems from the start. This isn’t the only time when he’s able to cater his performance of mental health to his audience (or lack of audience). We Hamlet adjust like this again in his ostentatious performance of madness later on in his ‘fishmonger’ exchange with Polonius. And then he jokingly tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ‘I am but mad north-north-west.’ In other words, he is able to display this madness in specific circumstances.

Can someone truly be mad if they can adjust their levels of madness for different audiences like that? I mean, he’s clearly going through mental anguish. He’s alone in this section of the scene, so he’s probably his most honest. And in that moment, he’s saying he wants his flesh to melt! That sounds a lot like he wishes he wasn’t on this planet anymore.

But for me, at least, being suicidal or wishing you could disappear is not the same as being mad in the Shakespearean sense of the word. It’s not the same as delusions or erratic behaviour.

And since he’s able to hold in these suicidal feelings until everyone leaves, Hamett’s behaviour in the original text the resembles masking that a neurodivergent person might do. He’s putting on a persona of being okay, which shows that he’s even more alienated from the people around him. It’s almost like he’s been holding a breath the whole time that he’s been in the presence of other people and he can finally let it out.

By contrast, this National Theatre (2025) version of Hamlet changes the context of when the soliloquy is delivered. Instead of Hamlet being alone on stage to reveal his inner thoughts, he does so in the middle of a freeze-frame: all the other characters are frozen in place and he’s the only one moving and expressing himself.

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That really makes us question his mental state from the very start. Can someone truly be mad if they cater their level of madness for different audiences? Yes, he’s clearly going through mental anguish, but that doesn’t translate to madness.

It also ties interestingly in to his more ostentatious performance of madness later on in the ‘fishmonger’ scene when he’s talking to Polonius. The original text shows us from the very start that Hamlet is able to perform a kind of calmness that doesn’t match his inner reality. So, it makes sense for us to question when he truly becomes mad, or if we can say he really ever became mad at all.