The Mousetrap before the court

Scene summary

In the castle hall, Hamlet rehearses the actors and asks them to speak their lines naturally, without sawing the air with the hand or tearing a passion to tatters, because the theater has always served as a mirror to nature: it shows virtue her own feature and scorn her own image. When Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pass by, he sends them to help the actors get ready. He then calls Horatio, says he is the most just man he has ever known and that he does not flatter him, and that he esteems him because Horatio takes the blows and the rewards of fortune in the same way. He tells him that a scene of the play reproduces his father's death and asks that, when the poisoning comes, he observe the king with all attention, for he himself will watch him: if the hidden guilt does not appear, the ghost they saw is a liar. Horatio agrees.

The court arrives: Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia and the lords. Claudius asks how his nephew is, and Hamlet replies that he lives on the chameleon's dish: he eats air, crammed with promises. The queen calls him to sit beside her, but he prefers the place at Ophelia's feet and asks her questions with double meanings. He says his mother is pleased and his father has been dead only two hours, and Ophelia corrects him: two months, twice two months. A wordless pantomime reproduces the crime: an actor-king sleeps in the orchard, another takes his crown and pours poison into his ear, and afterward courts the widow, who ends up accepting him. In the spoken play, the stage king, sick, tells the queen that he will die before her and hopes she will marry again, and she swears that a second husband would be treason and that only one who kills her husband marries again. Hamlet comments: "If she should break it now!" and Gertrude thinks the lady protests too much. Claudius asks whether the play contains any offense, and Hamlet answers that it is called The Mousetrap and that it does not touch those with free souls. Lucianus, nephew of the play's king, enters and pours poison into the ear of the sleeping king. Hamlet says the murderer will soon win the love of the widow of Gonzago. Claudius rises, asks for lights and leaves with the queen, while Polonius orders the play stopped.

Hamlet and Horatio agree that the Ghost told the truth, and Hamlet asks for music. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bring messages: the king is agitated, and the queen wants to speak with Hamlet in her chambers before he goes to sleep. Hamlet rebukes Guildenstern for wanting to play him like a flute, since he is no easier to play than the instrument. Polonius repeats the queen's summons, and Hamlet makes him agree that a cloud looks like a camel, a weasel, and a whale. Alone, he resolves to go to his mother without harming her: he will speak daggers, but use none.