Queen Mab II

When watching  episode 5 of the tv series Playing Shakespeare entitled Set Speeches and Soliloquies, I observed the following : When John Barton asks Michael Pennington to deliver "To Be or Not To Be" - which in itself had an air of being rather preposterous, "hic Rhodos, hic salta", work yourself into Hamlet at once ;-), here and now!!- , he asks him to deliver it in two distinct ways, first just to himself - excluding the audience - and then addressing the audience, including it. Observing what he does very closely though - and gratefully enough we can since the camera catches the final part in close up - it feels like Michael Pennington, instead of going for the "either - or" , settles for the "and/or", he takes the audience on a trip into Hamlet's mind, or even better, he has created a dream - Hamlet - and has shared this dream with us.