What a piece of work is man! How noble
in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like
a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
(See Important Quotations Explained)
The other important event in this scene is the arrival
of the players. The presence of players and play-acting within the
play points to an important theme: that real life is in certain
ways like play-acting. Hamlet professes to be amazed by the player
king’s ability to engage emotionally with the story he is telling
even though it is only an imaginative recreation. Hamlet is prevented
from responding to his own situation because he doesn’t have certain
knowledge about it, but the player king, and theater audiences in
general, can respond feelingly even to things they know to be untrue.
In fact, most of the time people respond to their real-life situations
with feelings and actions that are not based on certain knowledge.
This is what Hamlet refuses to do. His refusal to act like he knows
what he’s doing when he really doesn’t may be construed as heroic
and appropriate, or quixotic and impossible. In either case, Hamlet’s
plan to trap the king by eliciting an emotional response is highly
unsound: Claudius’s feelings about a play could never be construed
as a reliable index of its truth.
