In Elsinore, instructing the actors who are getting ready to perform The Murder of Gonzago, a ghost play that is also a Mousetrap set to catch his father's killer, Hamlet begins by remembering other players, other performances: “O, there be players that I have seen play […]” (III.2.33–34). In New York, when Live Schreiber began those same instructions in Andrei Şerban's 1999 production for the Public Theatre, Hamlet was literally faced with remembering those players and performances, that is, faced with Hamlet's history. As he spoke, cast members entered carrying posters of Hamlets past:

These still photographs, ghosts of previous Hamlets and Hamlets, are symbolic travellers who return to inform Şerban's production and remind his Hamlet of the world of theatre history he himself will enter. More clearly than anywhere else in this production, the scene reads Elsinore as the theatre, the most appropriate place for Hamlet to remember his father(s) and the likeliest space for actors and audience to make sense of Hamlet.