III.i. To Be or Not to Be - Brian Cox Masterclass with Theo

Before going on to the next sequence, I thought I'd share this lovely video of Brian Cox teaching a 30-month-old to do Hamlet. Though it's a measure of parroting the words, is there something modern actors or directors can take away from this innocent intonation of the words? There may be. We're used to Hamlet being "too old" to be a student, but how about too young? How does that change our perception of the play? What if Hamlet were a troubled teenager? Or as in this case, he would be meditating on mortality when his entire life stretches before him? It's a magical moment when Theo looks away from Cox and repeats the soliloquy while looking into the distance, somehow getting into the proper performance on instinct.

Brian Cox explains the experiment in a later interview: