Download Two points I need to make: Revenge is indicative of culture Vehicle

Two points I need to make:
 Revenge is indicative of culture
 Vehicle for eventual revenge
The Play Within the Play in Hamlet
Shakespeare titled the play within the play that takes place in Act III, Scene ii
of Hamlet “The Mousetrap.” By producing a play for his uncle Claudius, Hamlet hopes to “catch
the conscience of the king”—to confirm his own suspicions that Claudius did, in fact, poison
Hamlet senior and to let Claudius know that Hamlet is aware of his uncle’s fratricide (II, ii,
603). As the play is about to begin, Hamlet remarks, “look you, how cheerfully my/ mother
looks, and my father died within these two hours” (III, ii, 115-116). Then the play about a
murder in Vienna of a Viennese king, Gonzago, begins. A King and Queen embrace lovingly.
Remarking that he is getting old and frail, the player Queen replies that she would never remarry,
saying “None wed the second but who killed the first” (III, ii, 169). The King lies down to sleep
and the Queen exits. Then, another man enters and pours poison into the sleeping King's ear. At
this reenactment of the murder, Claudius stops the play and rushes out of the room in a fit of
rage, which Hamlet sees as indicative of his uncle’s guilt.
Previously, while contemplating producing the play, Hamlet says, “I’ll have these
players/ Play something like the murder of my father/ Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks,/
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but belch,/ I’ll know my course” (II, ii, 57-59). Here Hamlet
clearly lays out the relationship between this play within a play and revenge. The revenge is
directly initiated by Claudius’ reaction to Hamlet’s “Mousetrap.” And, as Freud would suggest, it
is through the play that Hamlet begins to come to terms with the murder of his father. It is after
the play within the play that Hamlet’s madness that has been developing for some time now
takes on a very definite purpose. He says, “That I essentially am not in madness/ But mad in
craft” (III, iv, 209-210). Now that he has confirmation of Claudius’ guilt, he is utterly consumed
with the idea of revenge; his madness serves as a cover for the vengeful thoughts that fill his
head.
Hamlet’s plans for revenge take an unexpected turn when Laertes challenges Hamlet to a
duel. During this duel, not only do Hamlet, Claudius, and Laertes all die of the same poisoned
sword, but Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, falls dead upon drinking from a poisoned chalice. Thus
Hamlet’s plan for revenge certainly does not play out the way he intended. Further, it is the
obsession with revenge, incited by the play within the play, that ultimately leads to the death of
so many. By killing Laertes’ father and inciting Laertes’ anger, Hamlet directly and indirectly
causes the death of Laertes, Laertes’ father, the Queen, and ultimately, himself (in addition to
Claudius, as he had planned).
How Renaissance Culture Helps us Understand Hamlet’s Revenge
Critic John Doebler suggests that the word “mousetrap,” the title which Hamlet assigns to
the play, would carry “rich iconographical associations” for the Renaissance audiences that a
contemporary reader would likely miss (Doebler, 162). Given the commonplace nature of this
symbol in the Renaissance, Doebler asserts that the “brief mention of the play’s title itself” can
be seen as “a symbolic microcosm communicating to the audience much of the elaborate irony
on which the whole dramatic action of Hamlet pivots” (162). Doebler cites the myriad of
connotations associated with mice including gluttony, corruption of all they touch, charges of
uncleanliness in the Bible, and the Augustinian conception of the cross as a mousetrap on which
the devil was ensnared and that subsequently caused his downfall. The Augustinian conception
of the mousetrap, which would have been very familiar to Shakespeare’s contemporaries,
dovetails perfectly with the outcome of Hamlet’s plan for revenge as “when the trap is set the
devil snaps at the bait; the mouse is caught; but he is caught by one who must himself die to
defeat him fully.” Hamlet’s death parallels Jesus’ and “results in tragic resurrection, in the sense
that he has died while saving the kingdom for mankind” (169). Thus, by conflating Claudius
with a mouse and the play with the initial trap in Hamlet’s plan of revenge, Shakespeare uses the
play as a critical device that helps convey the overarching meaning of the entire play to the
audience.
Similarly, without previous knowledge of Elizabethan slang and language, one would
easily miss the genius of some of Hamlet’s lines in the play. Hamlet, wavering seemingly
between clear lucidity and insanity, often speaks in both jumbled and obscured phrases as he
tries to convince Claudius of his insanity—a key component of his plan for revenge. Often
Shakespeare has Hamlet employing puns to express himself. These are crafted to give the
listener a sense of confusion and of Hamlet’s insanity at first. However, upon further inspection,
with an eye towards the cultural context, we see that Hamlet, in fact, uses these puns to partially
conceal his true thoughts. He remarks to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunn'ry” (III, i, 120). Here,
nunnery functions as a double-entendre, as ‘nunnery’ was a commonly used slang term for
‘brothel’ in Elizabethan England (MacCary, 90). This duality, unintelligible without knowledge
of the cultural context, represents Hamlet’s disturbed thoughts and extreme emotional distress
throughout the play.