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What happens in Act 3, Scene 2 of Hamlet?
The actors perform a play that recreates Claudius’s murder of his brother, causing Claudius to flee the room. Emboldened by this confirmation of Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet goes to speak with Gertrude.
Read our Summary & Analysis of Act 3, Scene 2. (2-minute read)
What is the significance of the “play within a play” in Hamlet?
CLAUDIUS: What do you call the play?
HAMLET: The Mousetrap.
Hamlet makes this joke at Claudius’s expense as the acting troupe that he has taken direction of (“The Players”) prepares to perform The Murder of Gonzago, a made-up play structured to mirror King Hamlet’s murder as the Ghost described it. Hamlet expects that seeing his crime acted out on stage will shock Claudius into revealing his guilt, thus his quip in calling the play The Mousetrap. (As Hamlet said in Act 2, Scene 2, “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”)
As was discussed in the Overview for Act 2, Hamlet’s elaborate trick fits in with the play’s (fourth) theme of Performance versus Reality. The staging of the play within the play takes up most of Act 3, Scene 2, and it also gives Shakespeare the opportunity to impart some of his considerable wisdom on the art of stagecraft, such as these words that he has Hamlet speak as he’s instructing The Players in Scene 2:
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature
What does Gertrude mean by “The lady protests too much, methinks”?
Gertrude’s most famous quote from Hamlet comes in Act 3, Scene 2 when she says it in response to Hamlet asking her what she thinks of the performance of the Player Queen in the role based on her in The Murder of Gonzago. Hamlet asks his question after the Player Queen strongly states her devotion to the soon-to-be-murdered king. By saying she thinks the character “protests too much,” she is essentially saying she is coming off as insincere—just as Gertrude was insincere in declaring her devotion to King Hamlet, in whose murder she has been implicated.
Read about this quote and others in Quotes by Character: Gertrude. (3-minute read)
