Instructor's note: This scene of Hamlet welcoming a theatrical troupe to the court of Denmark is famous for its description of play-acting as mimesis and for setting up "The Mousetrap," a play-within-a-play by which Hamlet attempts to provoke King Claudius into betraying his guilt in murdering Old King Hamlet, Claudius's brother and Prince Hamlet's father.

(from Act 2, Scene 2)

. . . [Flourish for the Players]         [a fanfare or short tune announcing the entrance of a troupe of actors]

Guildenstern: There are the players.              [players = actors, dramatists, thespians]

[Enter Polonius]        [Polonius = advisor to King Claudius & Queen Gertrude; father to Laertes & Ophelia]

Polonius [addressing the actors]: Well be with you, gentlemen! . . . [speaking to Hamlet >] The actors are come hither, my lord. . . . The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral [<comic catalogue of genres]; scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. . . .  [Seneca the Younger, 4BCE-65CE, Roman tragic playwright; Plautus, 254-184BCE, Roman comic playwright]

[Enter four or five Players.]                                [players = actors, dramatists, thespians]

Hamlet: You are welcome, masters; welcome, all.—I am glad to see thee well.—Welcome, good friends.—O, my old friend? [<Hamlet speaks to the troupe leader]  . . . We'll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech. . . .  [a brief “play within a play”]

[Omitted: The troupe leader (First Player) recites an impassioned account of Hecuba, queen of Troy, that concludes with the lines immediately below, which the actor speaks and feels with such powerful emotion that the reality of the present moment is affected (though that reality is in fact another play, Hamlet)]

First Player.  . . . But if the gods themselves did see her then,   [her = Hecuba, queen of Troy]
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport        [Pyrrhus = Neoptolemus, son of Achilles]
In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs,      [mincing: cutting; husband = Priam, father of Hector]
The instant burst of clamour that she made
(Unless things mortal move them not at all)
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven    [made milch = made milk; i.e. turned liquid or turned to tears]
And passion in the gods.

Polonius: Look, whether he has not turned his color, and has tears in his eyes. Prithee no more!   [he = the First Player] 

Hamlet: 'Tis well. I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon. Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear? Let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. . . . ["the abstract and brief chronicles of the time": on a surface level, Hamlet is warning Polonius that if the actors aren't treated well, in their continuing travels they will let other people or courts know that this court wasn't hospitable; on a larger scale, Hamlet may be saying that actors and plays represent a reality that seems exotic and escapist but in fact tells the "abstract" or meaning and "chronicle" or history of the time in which we live (or else why would we watch them?)]

[Exeunt Polonius and Players [except the First].] . . .

(from Act 3, Scene 2)

A hall in the castle.

[Enter HAMLET and Players [actors]]

Hamlet: [to the First Player or Lead Actor] Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue . . . . [Hamlet is referring to a speech or set of lines that he has written for the First Player to deliver in the "play within a play"]

First Player: I warrant your honour.   [i.e., "I will earn the respect you have paid me" (in giving me a speech to recite)]

HAMLET: Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your
tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of             [o'erstep = overstep, surpass]
nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,     ["from" = against; "playing" = acting, mimesis]
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own image,              [mimesis]
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure. . . .

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