Do you guys get the part where Hamlet says something about "the king's conscience"?

Question

I didn't quite get that part.......

And the one where he says, "Get thee to a nunnery" or something......

Here's the part I don't quite get........

"The play's the thing, with which I'll catch the conscience of the king."

Answer 1

Hamlet plans to have a group of actors put on a play in which a king is murdered. He's going to watch how Claudius reacts. He figures that if Claudius really did murder Hamlet's father, his guilty conscience will cause him to give himself away when he sees the actors portraying a similar murder. Look at the speech that ends with that "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King" line. Count back 15 or 20 lines from the end of the speech to find where Hamlet says "I have heard/That guilty creatures sitting at a play. . . ." Read from there to the end of the speech. That's where Hamlet explains his strategy.

Answer 2

The Conscience of the King. One of my least favorite Star Trek episodes. This episode used a similar ploy to discover whether an actor in a Shakespearean troupe was actually a treacherous genocidal murderer. Hamlet was devising a means using a stage play with a murder as it's plot to perhaps stir the conscience of the king whom Hamlet suspected of murdering his father.

Answer 3

Sure: To be, or not to be, this is the question ..., etc.

My opinion about the further monolog: Better to stay alive....
if money servers that of your cause promptly.
Anyway money is just paper, and life creates paper, not the vise versa of it,