Alerted by a voice, Hamlet, sword drawn, rushes to a curtain in his mother’s room behind which Polonius is hiding to spy on the prince’s conversation with Gertrude. In the next moment, thinking the spy is Claudius, Hamlet will impale the hapless courtier with the words, “How now! a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!” The sparse setting focuses the viewer’s full attention on the action itself, creating a sense of suspense.