Mousetrap - Mousetraps in Literature

Mousetraps in Literature

Reference to a mousetrap is made as early as 1602 in Shakespeare's Hamlet (Hamlet; act 3 sc.2) where it is the name given to the 'play-within-a-play' by Hamlet himself. There is a reference in the 1800s by Alexandre Dumas, père in his novel The Three Musketeers. Chapter ten is titled "A Mousetrap of the Seventeenth Century". In this case, rather than referring to a literal mouse trap, the author describes a police or guard tactic that involves lying in wait in the residence of someone whom they have arrested without public knowledge and then grabbing, interviewing, and probably arresting anyone who comes to the residence. In the voice of a narrator, the author confesses to having no idea how the term became attached to this tactic.

There is an earlier reference, found in Ancient Greek The Battle of Frogs and Mice. Although not by name in this translation, the reference is clear. "...Ruthless men dragged another to his doom when by unheard-of arts they had contrived a wooden snare, a destroyer of Mice, which they call a trap" (11. 110-121).

Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with the oft-quoted remark in favor of innovation: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." In the June 1912 issue of The Philistine, Elbert Hubbard admits that his "kabojolism" (a neologism coined by Hubbard to describe what a writer, "would have said if he had happened to think of ") was "a mousetrap that caught a lot of literary mice intent on orphic cheese."

Mousetraps are a staple of slapstick comedy and animated cartoons. The Tom and Jerry cartoon usually bases their plot on Tom attempting to trap Jerry with different (and sometimes ridiculous) methods of trapping the mouse, often being outsmarted by the latter and injuring himself in the process with the traps.