![]() “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature. ![]() In preparing for the performance, Hamlet provides the players with specific lines and actions to include within the overall play they are about to perform and gives them lengthy instructions as to the acting of it so as to make it seem as real as possible. Within this speech, Hamlet demonstrates his understanding that fiction often reflects reality sufficiently enough to cause a guilty conscience discomfort when confronted with similar circumstances (Westlund, 1978). If ‘a does blench, / I know my course / … / The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” (II, ii, 575-578, 582-584, 590-591). He reveals his purpose for doing this in a soliloquy that closes the Act: “I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play / Have by the very cunning of the scene / Been struck so to the soul that presently / They have proclaimed their malefactions / … / I’ll observe his looks. He first directs the players to perform a specific play that comes close to mimicking what he believes must have happened between his father and his uncle in Act 2, scene 2. In trying to prove that his uncle is guilty, Hamlet decides to use a troupe of players that have come to the castle, making the Mousetrap play equally play double duty as has most of the characters. Shakespeare brings attention to this concept explicitly through his presentation of a play within the play. Polonius seems to be a servile counselor to his lord but is a scheming profiteer and Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are actually his would-be murderers. Gertrude seems to be a gracious queen, deferring to her duty as leader of a country, but is actually little more than a plaything if seen as innocent and at least as debased as Claudius if seen as guilty. Claudius pretends to be a righteous king but is, in actuality, little more than a base murderer. Hamlet feigns insanity to discover the truth, but he quickly discovers that he is not the only one who merely seems to be something they are not. As the ghost demands vengeance, Hamlet seeks a way to both prove what the ghost has said and bring about the revenge that is demanded if the ghost is correct. As the action unfolds, Shakespeare tells the story of the young prince of Denmark who is informed by the ghost of his father that his Uncle Claudius, now married to Hamlet’s mother, murdered his father with poison. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, Bernardo starts off the action by demanding to know “Who’s there?” (I, i, 1).
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