“The Mousetrap”

“The Mousetrap”

“The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King"

Revenge:initiated by the play, executed by

an amateur

“But am I Pigeon-livered and lack gall”

What’s significant about the “Mousetrap”?

“Rich Iconographical Associations”

• Title of the play within a play is a “symbolic microcosm” of the entire play• Commonly used symbol• Mousetrap connotations• gluttony• corruption and dirtiness• Augustinian conception of the mousetrap• Saint Augustin – the cross as a mousetrap on which the devil was ensnared

What else does culture tell us, dawg?

• Deeper meaning in some lines• Hamlet’s vagueness contributes to his insanity• Yet he actually tells us exactly what he means more than the modern audience might think• This is through puns•“Get thee to a nunn'ry” (III, i, 120). • Double-entendre• Nunnery was slang for ‘brothel’ in Elizabethan England