The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.–From Hamlet (II, ii, 633)

Hamlet intends to stage a play to reenact what he believes to have been the murder of his father, the late King of Denmark. The king had died a seemingly natural death, plunging his son into a despair compounded by the fact that less than a month later, Hamlet’s mother Queen Gertrude, married the king’s brother, Claudius. Hamlet Sr. appears to Hamlet in the form of a ghost, and tells him that he was, in fact, murdered by Claudius. This play-within-a-play takes place in Act III, with a dumb-show prologue in which Hamlet’s poisoning theory is played without dialog, followed by a play which Hamlet says he calls “The Mouse-trap”, intended to catch Claudius in his guilt, and which contains another famous line: “The lady doth protest too much”.

R. Moore. “Shakespeare Quotes’s Famous Quotations: The play’s the thing: An Explanation.” eNotes: Shakespeare Quotes. Ed. Penny Satoris. Seattle: Enotes.com LLC, October 2001. 3 January 2007. <http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-masters/294>

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