To be … Hamlet: Three modern-day actors make their case for this most enigmatic of characters

Who is Hamlet? This might seem like a strange question to ask about the most famous character in all literature, a figure incarnated by some of the most brilliant actors of the last four centuries and the subject of a library of writing analyzing the political, philosophical and psychoanalytic meanings of his every move.

But "Hamlet" is a play of paradoxes, and perhaps the greatest of these is that the protagonist who reveals more of his mind than any other in Shakespeare remains something of an impenetrable mystery. His enigma may be the secret of his inexhaustible fascination.

Each encounter with the play promises new insight into an elusive character forced by festering circumstances to play a series of roles, none of which can be said to be the true Hamlet. The grieving Prince, who knows so much about acting that he gives technical advice to the strolling players, has been cast by the ghost of his dead father to star in a revenge drama, in which he brings to justice his murderous, incestuous uncle, Claudius.

"Hamlet" dramatizes the colossal mismatch between an infinitely complicated character and a primitive plot. T.S. Eliot thought the play was consequentially an artistic failure, but it is exactly this dissonance between Hamlet and the hackneyed avenger