Hamlets Dresser

             These tools and the defining process of language, enable him to relate to other people who share his love of Shakespeare and help him share his passion about art as a healing tool. His belief that, "art can be a brutal thing, not just some decoration placed over the truth, but the truth itself," (Smith 157) demonstrates that he has made a profound personal discovery about how art relates to the human condition.
             Examining the use of the these tools by Bob Smith in more detail, such as the painting and drawing, and taking part in various Shakespeare productions and watching them, demonstrates how effective they can be and how valuable they are for everyone who is lonely, for they are tools of unification, not alienation. Painting, drawing, acting, and watching allow people to share their passions and relate to one another on an active and emotionally unifying level. Smith is saying that even though we enter this world alone and depart it alone, while we are here we are surrounded by people just like us and are here to reach out to them through language and the arts.
             Literary artists understand this better than most people and devote their lives to reaching out to their audiences. They use the language and the visual arts to communicate their themes, and everyone who participates in plays shares in the noble task of uniting humanity. Smith misunderstood the value of the arts at first, for he initially valued poetry as, " . . .a beautiful place to hide from my life and my parents, a place I knew they"d never follow me to." (Smith 112) It was only later that he learned to use it not as a refuge from other people but as a bridge to them. In Hamlets Dresser he is appealing to people to avoid his mistakes and discover the healing nature of language and the arts.
             In order to accomplish his goals Smith uses the perpetual shifting of time in his book narrative and presents Shakespeare's plays as connective tissue.