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Restaging “The Mousetrap” In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, we learn of the unfolding spectacle within a young man’s family through his thoughts, doubts and hesitations that eventually precipitate acts of both premeditated and sudden revenge. Although it’d be unfair to pigeonhole the Prince of Denmark as an indecisive man of melancholy, he certainly does spend most of his time wrestling with the truth behind the alleged events that have taken place within Elsinore’s walls. Through all his sulking, Hamlet remains a calculating individual, despite eccentric tactics that would appear otherwise. It seems likely that a man’s behavior, marked by a clear decision to act as if he is crazy (while abusing the people around him and giving free expression to antisocial thoughts), would be hard to assess regarding the indistinct point at which he stops pretending to be crazy and starts actually being crazy. However, what makes this emotional turmoil most interesting with regard to Hamlet, is the fact that he maintains a relatively clear head in spite of himself when trying to ascertain whether his Uncle bears any responsibility in the matter of the Dane’s untimely death. With help from Horatio, Hamlet best demonstrates his resolve in act three, scene two, where he stages “The Mousetrap”, a clever parable involving a past story regarding the murder of the Duke of Urbino. The play within the play mirrors the murder of Hamlet’s father at the hands of his Uncle Claudius, while also foreshadowing the death of Claudius at the hands of his nephew. Up until this point in the play, Hamlet has struggled with the confessions of a ghost, unable to make any clear distinctions regarding the accuracy of his heavy accusations. Therefore, what makes this scene so crucial, as well as why I chose it as the scene that I would stage, is that it marks the point where Hamlet is determined to expose his Uncle, saying that “[I]f his occulted guilt do not itself unkennel in one speech, it is a damned ghost that we have seen and my imaginations are as foul as Vulcan’s stithy.” Hamlet believes that the play is an opportunity to establish a more reliable basis for Claudius's guilt than the claims of the ghost. Since he has no way of knowing whether to believe a member of the spirit world, he tries to determine whether Claudius is guilty by reading his behavior for signs of a psychological state of guilt.
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