The Lounge

Extending the Trap:

The Unending Play-Within-A-Play in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

By Sierra B. Ryan

“A rat?” Hamlet questions as he stabs Polonius. Given the victim was not the prey the Prince had in his scope, yet still the snap of “The Mousetrap” echoes from two scenes earlier. After the performance of the brief, incriminating play, Elsinore becomes a vast stage upon which Hamlet will enact his revenge. The play of “The Mousetrap” frees Hamlet from the confines of his circular contemplations, and through theatrical acting Hamlet is able to “take the name of action” and use pretense unveils the truth. However, even before the arrival of the players, Hamlet had been performing for the court, costuming himself in feigned madness so as to preserve his knowledge and by his disguise hopefully find himself in the presence of Claudius when he lets his guard down and unmasks himself. It is the arrival of the troupe and the air of theatrics that allows Hamlet to finally take action, spurred by both his trappings and the influence of false power.

            The performance of “The Mousetrap” turns Elsinore into a stage upon which Hamlet it put into action. Before the arrival of the players, Hamlet is either sulking as a “poor wretch” (II.ii.168) or speaking in riddles, mostly with Polonius.  The Prince’s private thoughts waver between action and inaction, between hasty revenge and calculated trial. When the troupe arrives Hamlet is thrown into excitement even before he divulges his plans to use a play  draw back the curtain on Claudius’s guilt. Hamlet requests the First Player after only a handshake, if that, to give “a speech straight”(II.ii.430), and when asked which speech, Hamlet launches into fifteen lines, losing himself in the act, but then,  remembering that he is not alone, asks the player to “proceed”(II.ii.465). Polonius, meanwhile, compliments the Prince, if somewhat backhandedly, that he was “well spoken, with good accent and good discretion” (II.ii.466-467). Hamlet lets himself become an actor for a moment, although he has been performing since the end of act one, scene five, disguising himself in the robes of fabricated madness; but here Hamlet sees the opportunity to use theatrics and pretending to start Claudius “with false fire”(III.ii.264). Even the speech of Pyrrhus which Hamlet recites is similar to how he views Claudius, covered in “coagulate gore, with eyes like carbuncles”, seeking to murder the good, kingly Priam, not unlike Hamlet’s father. As the First Player pronounces the bloody scene of Priam’s murder upon the blade of Pyrrhus, the ensuing wail of the “mobled queen” Hecuba and Hamlet is shown the proper dichotomy of what should have been his own mother’s reaction to the death of her husband. This speech represents what should have been. All the dramatics that the players bring with them reflect the truth and proper responses as juxtaposed to what has been happening in Hamlet’s family circle. When the First Player finishes, Polonius scoffs that the actor’s face had “turned… color and has tears in his eyes”(II.ii.519-520), thinking it is gross pretending. Hamlet, on the other hand, berates himself for the villainy that an actor “but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit” (II.ii.552-553). Hamlet, who has more real cause to weep and roar than any actor with any false conflict, cannot muster the passion and the definitive form of action that the player can. The stage is thus a place where emotions and their ramifications  are loosed. If a play can portray more fervor than reality, Hamlet knows the route by which to drive his plans.   Characters merge and actions blend, the lines between play and reality are blurred as soon as the players step into Hamlet’s plotting and theatre becomes the main resource which Hamlet will use to galvanize his revenge.  “The Mousetrap” allows for a catharsis which does not stop until all but one is dead. Playacting becomes real, and the fates and consequences are lifted from the confines of a script and run rampant in the world. Polonius tells the audience of “The Mousetrap” that he did “enact Julius Caesar [and] was killed by in the Capital” (III.ii.101-103) and so Polonius meets a similar end to the one his character had encountered. Plays and speeches beyond just “The Mousetrap” take on power in Elsinore. The theater  becomes reality.

            The power a play possesses is not lost on Hamlet and he muses “that guilty creatures sitting at a play/ Have by the very cunning of a scene/ Been struck so to the soul that presently/ They have proclaimed their malefactions” (II.ii.590-593). Hamlet concludes that he will have the players perform a piece similar to the murder of his father, and as it is recited Hamlet will have Claudius watched so as to spy the king's guilty reaction. The play is Hamlet’s trial of Claudius, and it is his only blenching into the truth. Although the Prince mentions in this soliloquy that “the spirit [he had] seen/ May be the devil, [for] the Devil hath power/ To assume a pleasing shape… [and came to] Abuse [and thereby] damn [him]” (II.ii.599-604), Hamlet is not so concerned with proving the validity of the Ghost as his legitimate parent as he is with convicting Claudius. Hamlet tells the Ghost “Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,/ Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,/ Be thy intents wicked or charitable,/ Thou comest in such a questionable shape/ That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet,/ King, father, royal Dane” (I.v.40-45). The Ghost in Hamlet’s mind is the character of his father, and the Prince is not concerned with peering under that mask and assuring himself that there is no demon beneath. Instead he is solely absorbed in ripping off the disguise of King, loving husband, and concerned Uncle from Claudius, and showing him to be nothing more than a murderous usurper soaked purple in royal blood.

            During the performance of the play-within-a-play, Hamlet cannot keep still nor quiet. He shouts, announces, interjects, and can even be read as clamoring onto the stage, doing as the actors do, pointing out each nuisance making sure to drive the points of the action into Claudius’s heart so Horatio, hidden in the wings, may spy the King’s criminal glances more easily. Hamlet dissolves into the action of the play, he becomes part of it; he helps blur the lines between reality and fiction. The stage of “The Murder of Gonzago” spreads beyond the confines of the great hall and into every nook of the castle, and everything becomes either performance, the sword fight in the last scene for means of entertainment, or the rejection of performance, the refusal to perform proper burial rituals for Polonius and Ophelia. Elsinore becomes Hamlet’s rattrap after “The Mousetrap”—in many ways the play never ends but rather merges with the real lives of the play. The actors never take their bow, an epilogue is never given. The last words that are recognizably part of the performance, as given by an accusing Hamlet are “[the audience] shall see anon how/ the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife” (III.ii.261-262). But instead the play seeps into the exterior, even the fates of the actors are not divulged. They are not dismissed or pack up to leave the rotten state, instead they seem to dissolve into the woodwork, or more probably become the spectators of the real action. There is no conclusion to “The Mousetrap” but instead the play-with-in the play ends much where the action has in the play of “Hamlet” proper. Although there have been nearly three full acts between the event of King Hamlet’s death, they have been scenes of contemplation and conundrum, where the action of the play-within-a-play leaves off the action of the play begins. After “The Mousetrap” Hamlet kills Polonius, deems that his “thoughts be bloody or nothing worth” (IV.v.67), and he returns and finally takes his revenge upon his murderous uncle. It is not only the Prince who is galvanized into action, as Claudius’ guilt is revealed, for although it is assumed it is not until his prayer as excited by the play that we, the readers and the audience, are sure of his culpability. In many ways, as “The Mousetrap” was a portrayal of the happenings that occurred before the entrance of Bernardo and Marcellus, so is the rest of “Hamlet: Prince of Denmark” the bulk and end of “The Mousetrap”. The two plays converge into one, acting becomes action and staging has real consequences.

            Before the arrival of the players and the performance of “The Mousetrap”, the only people pretending were Hamlet, staying safe inside his insanity, and Claudius, pretending to be a mourning brother and an innocent king. After the play, Claudius’s guise begins to unravel but he is still protected by spectacle. As Claudius attempts prayer following the accusation of “The Mousetrap”, Hamlet enters and is about to kill him, but Claudius is saved by the spectacle of devotion. His “stubborn knees” are bowed and his head is titled into folded hands, and Hamlet mistakes him to be at prayer  and cannot be revenged upon him then for if the Prince were to “take [Claudius] in the purging of his soul” (III.iii.85), he would be sending him to heaven with his sins freshly absolved. Hamlet thus decides to take the King in his revelry in “some act that has no relish of salvation in it” (III.iii.92). What Hamlet does not know is that Claudius is not actually praying but only attempting to, thus Claudius is unwittingly saved by acting prayer, not actually committing it. The final scene in which Laertes and Hamlet are pitted against one another in what is for outward shows, to appear to be a sporting duel with rapiers, is another performance whereby the court thinks they are going to see some skilled fun, unaware of the poisonous bloodbath that ensues. And the denial of spectacle leads to demise. Laertes returns in secret to Denmark to kill Claudius because of the suspicious nature of his father’s death and disposal, “his means of death and obscure funeral—/no trophy, sword, nor hatchment over his bones,/ no noble rite, nor formal ostentation” (IV.v.216-218). Had Polonius been given proper ritual and spectacle, Laertes would not have thought so harshly on revenge and then would not have been so keen to kill Hamlet. Also, had Ophelia not been subject to questionable burial in the unhallowed ground, Hamlet might not have stumbled upon the funeral and spit in Laertes’ face and thus spawned a mutual wrath which acted as the major device in their demises. These are merely conjectures, but the denial of ostentatious funeral rites gave no closing to the characters; to them it was akin to tickets being sold and the shows cancelled for no refund.

            The play-within-the-play gives the play action. The performance of fiction allows Hamlet to perform reality. “The Mousetrap” smudges the lines between what is real and not, and the actions and consequences of the theater extend into the castle. The magic of playacting enables reality to find its footing and start running in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”.