The Play within the Play: Hamlet

1. The Play within the Play: Hamlet Young-Soo Kim

2. In Hamlet, the significance of the inset action depends upon the perception by the members of the internal audience of the analogy between the fictional world, and their own.

4. In Act 2, Hamlet realized that Claudius is responsible for his father’s death. In order to conceal that the fact he knows the truth, he acts a role as a mad man, also, men around him, also play a role in order to conceal the fact that they are actually probing Hamlet’s real intention. – Little play within the play

5. The first player in Act2, scene2, enters so fully into the feelings of those he impersonates that he is moved to tears, prompting Hamlet to comment upon the discrepancy between the Player’s passionate response to a hypothetical situation and his own more restrained reactions to a real one.

6. The speeches that the first player recites reflect upon the action of the main plot in that they concern the exaction of vengeance, while Actors histrionic ability highlights that it is difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality which is Hamlet is having.

7. Hamlet’s Drama • In following act, the nature and function of drama are given more overtly discussed. Hamlet stresses the importance of naturalism of movement and gesture on the part of the performer asserting that the purpose of playing is to:

8. Hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

9. These lines serve a double purpose. • 1. He believes that a play stimulates the moral imagination of its spectator, heightens the expectations of the theatre audience in relation to the play within the play that is to follow. • 2. Movement and gestures are techniques of the play, and through the techniques of the theatrical representation, Hamlet wants to draw attentions of the offstage audiences.

10. The Murder of Gozago • Three characters’ reactions • Ophilia: Total ignorance – No guilty, innocent. • Gertrude: Concerned about the Queen in the play – sensitive upon the second marriage. • Claudius: React when he watches the play -he is responsible for the formal king’s death.

11. the play within the play holds up a mirror to its immediate spectators, inducing the dramatis personae to recognize the relationship between the fictional characters and themselves.