After the player's rendition of Hecuba's horror, Hamlet expounds to himself on the crux of his dilemma. He compares himself to an actor playing out the drama of his own life, but he cannot find the motivation to move beyond his immobilized state of melancholy. He is stuck in words, in the idea of action, terrified to move forward. The actor playacting as Phyrrus, a fictional character, is moved to kill his father's killer; the actor relating a fairytale about a woman's woes is capable of real emotion. Hamlet is an actor prompted by heaven and hell to seek revenge for his murdered father but is unschooled in his art and hesitates for fear of the consequences. His judgmental conscience stifles his emotions. He cannot sympathize with Gertrude or follow the Ghost's instructions to defend her honor because his fears blind him. His incessant pandering to words emasculates him. "That I . . . must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words." But because he is a man of words, he uses first the words of the play in his plan to strike at the king.
Hamlet ends the scene by revealing his plan to entrap the King by manipulating the play to force the King's conscience to incriminate him. This time the premeditated duplicity belongs to Hamlet. Surrounded by false friends and dubious love, Hamlet recognizes an opportunity to use the honest deception of the stage to illuminate the truth.
