Well, according to the stage directions in the play,
Hamlet enters after Claudius gives his soliloquy, which is intensely spiritual and
focused on his soul and the afterlife. Observe:
O, my offence is rank it smells to
heaven;
AND
O, what form of
prayer
Can serve my
turn?
AND
O wretched state! O bosom black as
death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be
free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make
assay!
You can't
have Hamlet step on those lines with an entry. They are full of apostrophes to pain and
suffering, and to have another body on stage will diminish their power and
relevancy.
Hamlet enters and says his monologue, so the
audience should be watching and listening to it, for it is a response to the soliloquy.
You can't have the audience's eye drawn to Claudius acting like he knows Hamlet is
there. It's just too hoaky.
Plus, there's not enough time.
Claudius only has a couple of lines after that, and then he's gone. Not to mention
that when Claudius says, "My words fly up...," he's talking about the silent ones in
prayer, so he's obviously busy praying. His praying is dramatic irony enough: the main
thing is that we know Hamlet is there, not him. You can't have him praying and noticing
Hamlet. Too busy.
The scene is about spiritual crisis for
both Claudius and Hamlet, not about the closeness of two actors. It's about Claudius
worrying about his soul, maybe for the first time. Hamlet, too, is worried about
Claudius' soul: he doesn't want to send him to heaven, only hell. He realizes that it's
spiritually not the right time to kill, which is ironic and
funny.
Let the audience focus on the words, not some
non-verbal action on stage. Shakespeare's all about the language, not the action, and
certainly not subtext and subtleties. I wouldn't diminish those words for anything.
That's what a movie adaptation is for. You might be able to do it with a close-up, but
not on stage, not even in the round. Too much can go wrong.
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