The Play Within the Play in Hamlet
Shakespeare titled the play within the play that takes place in Act III, Scene ii
of Hamlet “The Mousetrap.” By producing a play for his uncle Claudius, Hamlet hopes to “catch
the conscience of the king”—to confirm his own suspicions that Claudius did, in fact, poison
Hamlet senior and to let Claudius know that Hamlet is aware of his uncle’s fratricide (50). As the
play is about to begin, Hamlet remarks, look you, how cheerfully my/ mother looks, and my
father died within these two hours" (III, ii, 115). Then the play about a murder in Vienna of a
Viennese king, Gonzago, begins. A King and Queen embrace lovingly. Remarking that he is
getting old and frail, the player Queen replies that she would never remarry, saying "None wed
the second but who killed the first" (III, ii, 169). The King lies down to sleep and the Queen
exits. Then, another man enters and pours poison into the sleeping King's ear. At this
reenactment of the murder, Claudius stops the play and rushes out of the room in a fit of rage,
which Hamlet sees as indicative of his uncle’s guilt.
How the Play Within the Play Figures into Hamlet’s Revenge
Previously, while contemplating producing the play, Hamlet says, “I’ll have these
players/ Play something like the murder of my father/ Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks,/
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but belch,/ I’ll know my course” (50). Here Hamlet clearly lays
out the relationship between this play within a play and revenge. The revenge is directly initiated
by Claudius’ reaction to Hamlet’s “Mousetrap.” And, as Freud would suggest, it is through the
play that Hamlet begins to come to terms with the murder of his father. It is after the play within
the play that Hamlet’s madness that has been developing for some time now takes on a very
definite purpose. He says, “That I essentially am not in madness/ But mad in craft” (III, iv, 209210). Now that he has confirmation of Claudius’ guilt, he is utterly consumed with the idea of
revenge; his madness serves as a cover for the vengeful thoughts that fill his head in actuality.
After Claudius storms out of the play, Hamlet goes to kill him. However, finding
Claudius in prayer, Hamlet decides to wait to exact his revenge. Wishing to eternally damn
Claudius, Hamlet decides that if he were to strike him down in a moment of prayer, his soul
would be sent to heaven instead. He describes this situation that he so desperately wants to avoid,
saying, “A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to
heaven” (III, iii, 74-98).
While Hamlet is nearly driven mad with rage at Claudius and the all-consuming idea of
revenge, the young Laertes plots with Claudius to kill Hamlet. Laertes seeks to avenge his father
Polonius’ death; Polonius was killed by Hamlet earlier in the play when Hamlet found him
lurking behind a curtain spying on a conversation between Hamlet and his mother. To this end,
Laertes challenges Hamlet to a duel. Claudius arranges for Laertes to fight with a poisoned
sword. In the event that Hamlet is to win, they also poison Hamlet’s cup of wine. Yet, during the
duel, the Queen drinks Hamlet’s wine instead and dies from this poison. Meanwhile, Laertes
lands a deadly blow to Hamlet; but the swords change hands in the battle and before he dies,
Hamlet deals a deadly, poisoned blow to Laertes. Just before Hamlet himself dies, he stabs
Claudius with this same sword and forces Claudius to finish the chalice of poisoned wine; thus
Hamlet, Claudius, and Laertes all die of the same poisoned sword. Hamlet begs onlooker Horatio
to spread word of what transpired and to give the throne to Fortinbras, a neighboring leader
whose bravery Hamlet admires.
How Renaissance Culture Helps us Understand Hamlet’s Revenge
Critic John Doebler suggests that the word “mousetrap,” the title which Hamlet assigns to
the play, would carry “rich iconographical associations” for the Renaissance audiences that a
contemporary reader would likely miss (Doebler, 162). Given the commonplace nature of this
symbol in the Renaissance, Doebler asserts that the “brief mention of the play’s title itself” can
be seen as “a symbolic microcosm communicating to the audience much of the elaborate irony
on which the whole dramatic action of Hamlet pivots” (162). Doebler cites the myriad of
connotations associated with mice including gluttony, corruption of all they touch, charges of
uncleanliness in the Bible, and the Augustinian conception of the cross as a mousetrap on which
the devil was ensnared and subsequently caused his downfall. The Augustinian conception of the
mousetrap, which would have been very familiar to Shakespeare’s contemporary Englishmen,
dovetails perfectly with the outcome of Hamlet’s plan for revenge as “when the trap is set the
devil snaps at the bait; the mouse is caught; but he is caught by one who must himself die to
defeat him fully.” Hamlet’s death parallels Jesus’ and “results in tragic resurrection, in the sense
that he has died while saving the kingdom for mankind” (169). Thus, by conflating Claudius
with a mouse and the play with the initial trap in Hamlet’s plan of revenge, Shakespeare uses the
play as a critical device in the conveying the overarching meaning of the entire play to the
audience.