Name: Vipul Singh

Instructor’s Name: Mrs. Alka Singh

Course Name: B.A. LLB. (hons.), 2nd semester

Roll No. 155

Date:8th April,2012

Title: A research paper on “The Grave Digger Scene of

Hamlet”

Why this scene of hamlet?

(1) It intensifies the effect of tragedy. In this sense, the effect is paradoxical. Its humour provides

a catastrophe that is to follow. It is the calm before the storm. Simultaneously, the eerie

atmosphere of the play adds to the aura of the tragedy.

(2) The scene would definitely get a laugh from the uneducated groundlings who would enjoy a

relief to the long and tension-prevailing play.

(3) Shakespeare was not only a composer but was an actor and shareholder in the Company and

the Globe. So what was to happen to the comedians, the actors of his company who played the

lighter comic parts when a play such as Hamlet or Macbeth was o the board? They could not be

left without some small share in the proceedings, and this accounts for the grave-digger's scene.

A source of comic relief

At the outset, we visualize two clowns conversing regarding the imminent burial of a lady whose

death has taken place, as per them , under doubtful circumstances. They debate whether or not

whether she deserves a proper burial in the course of the same remains indifferent on the matter.

In the course they use ironical words like' salvation' when he means 'damnation' and uses the

word'se offendendo' instead of 'se defendedo'. The amusement is provided by Shakespearean

irony and the grave diggers' illiteracy and ignorance. Humorously, the grave digger is also

addressed as Goodman Dever. We also witness a parody of a contemporary case concerned with

the death of James Hales. Shakespeare parodies the same when he says that the act has three

branches-to act, to do and to perform. The grave-digger then assumes that the lady in question

committed suicide. It brings us to the burning question whether Ophelia committed suicide or

not.

Ques.What is the plot of the scene? From what point of view

the scene was written? Was the scene trying to give

information, to explain something technical to convince the

reader of a belief’s validity by dramatizing it in action?

The last time we saw Hamlet he was saying, "O, from this time forth, / My thoughts be bloody,

or be nothing worth! (4.4.65-66). Since then Ophelia has died, the King and Laertes have plotted

Hamlet's death, and Hamlet has sent letters to the King announcing his sudden return to

Denmark. Given all this build-up, we could expect climatic confrontation between Hamlet and

the King. Instead, we get gravediggers.

In a scene that adds nothing to the plot, but offers generous helpings of comedy and philosophy,

the gravediggers are clowns. In Shakespeare's plays a "clown" doesn't have a red nose and floppy

shoes, but he is funny. He's a hick, an ignoramus, a fool who thinks he's wise. These clowns

discuss the most profound issues in their clownish way, starting with the opening line of the

scene, "Is she to be buried in Christian burial that willfully seeks her own salvation?" (5.1.1-

2). It's a laugh line. Instead of "salvation," he should have said "destruction." The Second

Clown's reply is also a laugh line. He says "the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian

burial" (5.1.4-5). First of all, instead of "coroner," the clown says "crowner," which did mean

"coroner" a hundred years before. This suggests that the clown thinks of the coroner as a guy

who hands out crowns, like a judge at an archery contest. Second, a coroner, like a judge or jury,

"sits," but he sits in judgment, not on the corpse.

By this time, it must have occurred to us that these two clowns are digging Ophelia's grave. It's

been less than two minutes since we heard the beautifully elegiac description of Ophelia's death,

and now the gravediggers are busily at work, digging, and trying to figure out whether or not

Ophelia committed suicide. First Clown offers the idea that it wasn't suicide if she drowned

herself in self-defense. As though proving his point, he offers a fragment of fractured Latin: "It

must be " se offendendo   "; it cannot be else" (5.1.9).  If the clown knew what he was talking about,

he would have said "se defendendo," but his blunder is no more absurd than his idea. To kill

someone is "se offendendo," an offense, unless it is "se defendendo," in self-defense, but how do

you defend yourself against an offense committed by yourself in defense of yourself?

If the actors playing the clowns are any good, we're laughing. Are we supposed to think while

we're laughing? Because if we think about the clowns' absurdities, we might realize that when

we're not laughing, their absurdities are not so absurd. In fact, we think that the most common

reason for suicide is that people "can't stand it anymore." They commit suicide because they are

in unremitting pain, physical or psychological. So they docommit suicide in self-defense. Hamlet

said so much when he asked why anyone would put up with the insults of life, "When he himself

might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin? (3.1.75-76).

The clowns then reflect that if Ophelia had not been a gentlewoman she would not have had a

Christian burial, and this leads First Clown to assert that the first gentlemen were "gardeners,

ditchers, and grave-makers" (5.1.30).His clownish reasoning is that they "bore arms." To "bear

arms" is the sign of a gentleman, and it means that you have an officially registered coat of arms,

such as Shakespeare got for his family when he had enough money. But the clown's idea is that

all the diggers--"gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers"--must have had arms, or they couldn't

have done any digging. First Clown then follows this up with another joke, a riddle that

asks "What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?"

(5.1.41-42).

Before the gravedigger answers his own riddle, Hamlet and Horatio enter and observe him. As

they watch, the gravedigger triumphantly gives his answer: it is the "gravemaker" that builds

strongest of all, because "the houses that he makes last till doomsday" (5.1.59). Then he sends

his partner away for some liquor, and continues to dig. As he digs, he sings a song about how

love was sweet when he was young, but now that he is old, everything has changed.

Hamlet asks Horatio, "Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

(5.1.65-66). Horatio sensibly replies that the gravedigger has gotten used to it. Up to this point in

the play, Hamlet has been unable to get used to the idea of his father's death, but in the following

moments of the scene, Hamlet seems to adopt the gravedigger's viewpoint.

Nowadays, it's illegal to commingle human remains, but Shakespeare's day made more

economical use of graveyard space, so as the gravedigger digs, he shovels up a skull. Hamlet

comments, "That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once" (5.1.75). This comment is the

first of many that Hamlet makes in the same vein. He mockingly speculates that the skull could

have belonged to a politician who thought he could outsmart God, or to a courtier, who thought

he could flatter a man out of a horse. Now there's just the skull, being knocked around by the

gravedigger's spade. Hamlet says, "Here's fine revolution, and we had the trick to see't" (5.1.90-

91). "Revolution" means "change," "and" means "if," and "trick" means "knack" or "ability." So

Hamlet is saying that this change from life to death a good thing to keep in mind, if only we

could keep it in mind.

Meanwhile, the gravedigger shovels up another skull, and sings a morbidly jolly gravedigging

song, about a "pickaxe," a "spade," and a "pit of clay" (5.1.96). Hamlet speculates that the second

skull could have belonged to a lawyer, and he makes a series of punning comments about

lawyers. (Have lawyers ever gotten any respect?) The general point of the jokes is that no matter

how many legal documents you have, your whole estate will eventually be just six feet of dirt.

Then Hamlet decides--for no apparent reason other than just because--that he will speak to the

gravedigger. He steps forward, asks the gravedigger whose grave it is, and meets his match in

mockery.

The gravedigger's answer to Hamlet's question is "Mine, sir" (5.1.119). This begins a quick-

witted exchange between Hamlet and the clown, and the clown has the punchline. In answer to

Hamlet's questions, the clown claims that the grave is not for a man, and not for a woman, either;

when Hamlet finally asks who is to be buried in the grave, the clown answers: "One that was a

woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead" (5.1.135-136). So Hamlet never does learn that this is

Ophelia's grave, and we're laughing at the way the gravedigger mocks death.

Next, Hamlet asks the gravedigger how long he's been on the job. The clown replies that he

started the day that King Hamlet defeated King Fortinbras, which was the same day that Hamlet

was born. He adds that the Hamlet he's talking about is the one who has gone mad and been sent

to England. In England, he'll either "recover his wits," or not. If not, it won't matter, because

everyone in England is mad. Hamlet then asks how Hamlet went mad, and the gravedigger gives

him a nonsense answer, "e'en with losing his wits." Hamlet asks again, saying "upon what

ground?" "Ground" means "cause," but the gravedigger turns the question away with a pun,

saying, "Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years" (5.1.161-

162).

(Thus, amidst the jokes, we learn that Hamlet is thirty years old. However, it's hard to see why

this information is offered, and in such a roundabout, casual way. Shakespeare doesn't specify

ages very often, and when he does so in other plays, it's easy to see why. Juliet's youth is an

important element in her character, and Lear's age is equally important to his story. But thirty is

neither very young nor very old, and if the fact that Hamlet is thirty is important, why weren't we

told earlier?)

Hamlet's next question is "How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?" (5.1.163). Finally, one

of his questions receives a straight answer: eight or nine years. Unless the man is rotten before he

dies. On the other hand, a leather tanner will last longer, because then he'll be tanned himself,

and keep out the water. And speaking of lying in the earth here's a skull, says the gravedigger,

that's been in the grave for twenty-three years. At this moment, this meandering conversation

suddenly takes a poignant turn. The skull is Yorick's. "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a

fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" (5.1.185-186),says Hamlet. Yorick was his

father's jester, a man with the knack of making people laugh, a man who had given Hamlet, then

a child of six or seven, a "thousand" piggy-back rides. This precious memory collides with the

skull in Hamlet's hand, and he feels his throat tighten. He says, "my gorge rises at it"

(5.1.188), but instead of crying, he starts bantering with Yorick's skull. He asks Yorick where his

"flashes of merriment" are, and accuses him of being "quite chop-fallen" (5.1.193). Your chops

are your lower cheeks, your jaw, and if you are "chop-fallen," you have a long face because

you're sad. Yorick the jester isn't jesting now. He's chop-fallen. In fact, his chops have fallen

completely off. In short, Hamlet has just made a terrible pun at Yorick's expense.

Hamlet tells Yorick's skull to go to a fine woman's dressing room and tell her that no matter how

much make-up she uses, she'll be only a skull soon enough. Then he asks Horatio if Alexander

the Great, after he was dead, looked like this skull. Horatio says that he must have, and Hamlet

dismisses the skull, saying, "And smelt so? pah!" (5.1.200). At this point the editorial stage

directions usually say that Hamlet "puts down the skull," but the "pah" makes it feel like he just

tosses it aside. But he doesn't forget it. Yorick's skull has reminded him that we must all come to

this, and he launches into a flight of fancy about how the clay of Alexander or great Caesar could

be used as a cork for a beer-barrel or caulk to fix a hole in a wall.

As Hamlet ruminating on the future uses of human dust, another corpse comes onto the scene.

Hamlet sees a funeral procession conducted with"maimed rites" (5.1.219). The impression of

"maimed rites" is nearly impossible to reproduce on the modern stage. That is, we have rich

funerals and poor ones, but not different procedures that indicate who the deceased was and how

he/she died. Because we lack these customs, we cannot see what Hamlet (and Shakespeare's

audience) does. Luckily, Hamlet explains the significance of what he sees. The deceased was "of

some estate," of the upper class, but not royal. And the deceased was a suicide. Hamlet and

Horatio step out of sight--though not out of the audience's sight--to watch. Presumably, they

would want to know why a suicide is being buried in sanctified ground.

In the funeral procession, the first person we hear is Laertes, asking the priest"What ceremony

else? (5.1.223). Hamlet recognizes him, and points him out to Horatio as "a very noble youth." In

a few minutes, Hamlet's opinion will change drastically.

Laertes is angry that Ophelia's rites are "maimed," and wants more to be done for his sister. The

priest doesn't answer, Laertes repeats the question, and we find that the priest isn't too happy

either. He says that Ophelia's death was "doubtful," and "but that great command o'ersways the

order, / She should in ground unsanctified have lodged" (5.1.228-229). That is, if he had had his

way, the regular procedure ("order") for a suicide would have been followed, and Ophelia would

have been buried in unsanctified ground, and rocks thrown on her grave. But, because of a "great

command" (presumably the King's), Ophelia has flowers. She has her "virgin crants" (a garland),

and flowers to be scattered over her corpse, her "maiden strewments" (5.1.233).Laertes asks

again if nothing more is to be done, and the priest replies that to do more would be an insult to

"peace-parted" souls. This makes Laertes very angry. He declares that violets will grow from

Ophelia's grave, while the priest can go to hell. He says, "I tell thee, churlish priest, / A

ministering angel shall my sister be, / When thou liest howling" (5.1.240-242).

Only now does Hamlet realize whose grave this is. Meanwhile, Ophelia's corpse has been

lowered into the grave, and the Queen steps forward to strew flowers, saying "Sweets to the

sweet: farewell! / I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife" (5.1.243-244). This is

certainly not what Laertes wants to hear, and he curses Hamlet, then leaps into Ophelia's grave,

saying"Hold off the earth awhile, / Till I have caught her once more in mine arms" (5.1.249-

250). With Ophelia's body in his arms he asks that the earth be piled on the both of them until a

mountain covers the "quick and the dead."

Laertes' actions and words enrage Hamlet, and he rushes out from his hiding-place to leap into

the grave, too. The fact that Laertes has just cursed him doesn't seem to matter to Hamlet. What

matters, as he explains to Horatio in the next scene, is that "the bravery of his grief did put me /

Into a towering passion" (5.2.79-80). "Bravery" means "showiness." Hamlet doesn't accuse

Laertes of outright hypocrisy, but of being melodramatic. Of course, Hamlet is almost certainly

right about Laertes. If Hamlet hadn't rushed out to join Laertes in the grave, it doesn't seem likely

that Laertes would have actually stayed in there while the gravedigger shoveled dirt onto him.

Still, why should it matter so much to Hamlet?

Hamlet's first words melodramatically mock Laertes' melodramatic grief:"What is he whose grief

/ Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow / Conjures the wandering stars, and makes

them stand / Like wonder-wounded hearers?" (5.1.254-257). Once Hamlet is in the grave,

Laertes grapples with him, but apparently not with deadly intent, because Hamlet takes four lines

to tell him to get his fingers off his throat. Horatio and others intervene to separate the two, and

they come out of the grave. (Just how grotesque have these few moments been? There are at least

four feet in that grave with Ophelia's body. Does she get stepped on?)

Hamlet declares that he loved Ophelia, saying, "Forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all

their quantity of love, / Make up my sum" (5.1.269-271).He then asks Laertes what he'll do for

Ophelia. Will he fight? Starve himself? Eat a crocodile? If Laertes will do it, Hamlet will too.

The motivation for this furious mockery now seems to be that Laertes' grief is an affront to

Hamlet's, as though Laertes were putting on a show of grief in order to demonstrate that Hamlet

has no grief for Ophelia. Hamlet says to Laertes, "Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me

with leaping in her grave?" (5.2.277-278). And just before he exits, Hamlet asks Laertes, perhaps

without mockery, "Hear you, sir; / What is the reason that you use me thus? / I loved you ever"

(5.1.288-290). The notion that Laertes is trying to outdo Hamlet in grief seems highly illogical,

but perhaps it indicates that Hamlet has doubts or guilt about the depth of his feeling for Ophelia.

Both the King and Queen try to calm Laertes by saying that Hamlet is mad, but as soon as

Hamlet is gone, the King takes the opportunity to reassure Laertes that they will soon put their

plot against Hamlet into motion.

Thus, as far as the plot of the play is concerned, the only thing that happens in the whole scene is

that the threat to Hamlet's life is intensified. It seems that a major purpose of the scene must be to

show the development of Hamlet's character. But development in what direction? He banters

about death with the gravedigger, with Yorick's skull, and with Horatio, then flashes into anger

at Laertes' grief over Ophelia. And there's no soliloquy to explain it all.

Ques. What is the significance of the scene?

The Significance of the Grave-digger’s Scene in Hamlet WHY this scene? (1) It intensifies the

effect of tragedy. In this sense, the effect is paradoxical. Its humour provides a catastrophe that is

to follow. It is the calm before the storm. Simultaneously, the eerie atmosphere of the play adds

to the aura of the tragedy. (2) The scene would definitely get a laugh from the uneducated

groundlings who would enjoy a relief to the long and tension-prevailing play. (3) Shakespeare

was not only a composer but was an actor and shareholder in the Company and the Globe. So

what was to happen to the comedians, the actors of his company who played the lighter comic

parts when a play such as Hamlet or Macbeth was o the board? They could not be left without

some small share in the proceedings, and this accounts for the grave-digger’s scene. A Source Of

Comic Relief At the outset, we visualize two clowns conversing regarding the imminent burial of

a lady whose death has taken place, as per them , under doubtful circumstances. They debate

whether or not whether she deserves a proper burial in the course of the same remains indifferent

on the matter. In the course they use ironical words like’ salvation’ when he means ‘damnation’

and uses the word’se offendendo’ instead of ‘se defendedo’. The amusement is provided by

Shakespearean irony and the grave diggers’ illiteracy and ignorance. Humorously, the grave

digger is also addressed as Goodman Dever. We also witness a parody of a contemporary case

concerned with the death of James Hales. Shakespeare parodies the same when he says that the

act has three branches-to act, to do and to perform. The grave-digger then assumes that the lady

in question committed suicide. It brings us to the burning question whether Ophelia committed

suicide or not.

Ques. What is the genre or the general field of the scene and

how does the scene fits into it?

Death is tragic, painful, somber, grotesque. But who ever knew that death could even be laughed

at. In William Shakespeare tragedy Hamlet; grave diggers scene is one place where seriousness,

intermingles with the comic element...and the end product? One of the greatest works of

literature is born.

The occasional admission of comic ingredient in a tragedy to make it light, humorous is one of

the most interesting forms of tragedy. This intrusion of the comic into the tragic mode is called

comic relief. Though Aristotle in his Poetics does not make allowance for the dilution series

action, English drama fortunately is replete with instances to show how comedy and tragedy

occurred frequently in mystery, miracle and morality plays.

Conclusion:

No surprise, this final Act of Hamlet is as mysterious, ambiguous, and controversial as those that

precede it. The play begins rather straightforwardly, if ironically, as a revenge tragedy – Old

Hamlet’s ghost spurs his son to revenge – and it would seem that Act Five, like the Act Fives of

all major revenge tragedies preceding Hamlet, should fulfill this initial plotline. Indeed, in Act

Five Hamlet kills Claudius – finally. But he does so in such a roundabout, half-cocked, off-hand

way, we wonder whether this really counts as revenge. The death of Claudius certainly lacks the

poetic justice that vengeance seems to require. What on earth is Shakespeare trying to do with

this strange play – why doesn’t he give it a proper ending?

Many of the earliest extant critics of the play, those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

found the strange and abrupt manner of Hamlet’s revenge to be as puzzling as we might. These

critics often found fault with the play’s lack of moral meaning. After all, if Claudius was wrong

to kill his brother and marry his brother’s wife (and surely he was), shouldn’t the lethal

correction of these crimes feel more satisfying, more “right,” than it does in this play? Samuel

Johnson, writing in 1765, voices critical dissatisfaction quite clearly: “The poet is accused of

having shown little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical

probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he

demands is not obtained but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification

which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely

death of Ophelia.” In other words, Johnson charges that the ending of Hamlet is both unjust and

improbable. The earlier part of the play, including the role of the ghost in giving the death of

Claudius a moral shape, seems to have been forgotten. Hamlet seems to bring the drama to a

close almost accidentally, and Johnson accuses Shakespeare on these grounds of dramatic

clumsiness and moral ineptitude.

Later critics have been much less quick to fault Shakespeare’s dramatic instincts. Indeed, some

of them have found the ending of Hamlet to signal a shift to a “higher,” more self-aware theater,

a purposeful rejection of the simple morality of revenge in favor of a richer, deeper investigation

of the nature of performance itself. The critic Harold Bloom, for instance, has written at length

about Act Five as Hamlet’s rejection of his own dramatic role. He seems to have grown bored

with his own play, in other words, and shrugs off its generic requirements. Bloom writes: “Any

Fortinbras or Laertes could chop Claudius down; Hamlet knows he deserves the prime role in a

cosmological drama, which Shakespeare was not quite ready to compose.” In this view, Hamlet’s

final Act transcends the play itself. The plot, the action, has only been an occasion for Hamlet’s

own tremendously powerful self-exploration, and the culmination of the requirements of

"revenge tragedy" appropriately occurs almost despite the play itself.

Shakespeare’s abandonment of the central focus on revenge, then, perhaps amounts to his finally

agreeing with his protagonist, so to speak. Hamlet has been, from the very first moments of the

play, reluctant to carry out the absurd and generic task that is his as a character in a revenge

tragedy – “The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right!”

Shakespeare has purposefully miscast his hero and given us a character whose accomplishments

are intellectual and verbal, not violent and physical. By the final Act, it seems as though the

playwright has finally given up trying to tie his hero down to conventions. Hamlet has forced

Hamlet off the rails, taken it from a simple and predictable genre play to something inscrutable,

massively significant, and, for lack of a better term, post-theatrical.

Meanwhile, in between the two major events of Act Five (the burial of Ophelia and the duel

between Hamlet and Laertes), Shakespeare includes several very famous setpieces. The range of

Hamlet’s verbal and philosophical variety becomes clear as he goes from trading macabre jokes

with the gravedigger, to his moving rumination on the dead court jester, Yorick, to his

declaration of love for Ophelia and his attendant mockery of Laertes’ over-the-top mourning

display, to a scathing parody of Osric’s ludicrous courtly mannerisms. As noted before, Hamlet’s

mind seems to work as an intense magnifying glass of sorts. He looks at one subject – say, the

gravedigger’s macabre humor – and scrutinizes it to exhaustion before turning to another – say,

the nature of mortality as occasioned by the discovery of Yorick’s skull – and treating it with a

similar thoroughness. The variety of his curiosity is matched by depth of penetration. He is both

wide-ranging and profound – truly a Renaissance mind.

In this final Act, Hamlet seems no longer to curse this tendency of his to become distracted by

thought in favor of action, as he does for instance in his soliloquies on Hecuba and on Fortinbras’

army, but to celebrate it. He says to Horatio, for instance, when his friend seems concerned that

he is walking into the trap set by Claudius and Laertes, “[W]e defy augury. [...] If it be now, ’tis

not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness

is all.” Hamlet rejects “augury” – that is, he rejects any predictive phenomena, or any future-

oriented thinking at all. In a way, he rejects the ghost’s order to fulfill a set goal. (By the way, we

might ask what Hamlet means by “it” in the above sentence. Does “it” refer to his plan to kill

Claudius? – “If I will kill him now, so be it.” Does “it” rather refer to death itself? – “If I am to

die now, so be it.” Or is “it” a placeholder for anything, any event?) At any rate, Hamlet has

achieved a point of philosophical “quietus,” an acceptance of the world with all of its flaws and

absurdities, which he has made not with “a bare bodkin” but with his own mental powers. His

gaze is focused on some spiritual realm beyond the pettiness of Danish political intrigue.

Of the four deaths that occur in the final scene of the play, only one – Hamlet’s – is planned. The

other three are, if not senseless, at least spontaneous and chaotic. The entire gory episode seems

to be a playing-out of Hamlet’s new understanding of the world – death strikes randomly,

senselessly, absurdly. The only meaning that matters must be made out of apparent

meaninglessness. Hamlet’s dying words, in fact, are a plea to his friend, Horatio, to help the

court audience sort out the carnage that they have seen: “[I]n this harsh world draw thy breath in

pain, / To tell my story.” Hamlet emphasizes that significance comes only in retrospect, with

storytelling, with sense making, not in prospective action. His death thus demonstrates the value

of introspection over action, and the triumph of thought over fate, against the uncertainty and

confusion of death.

With the arrival of Fortinbras, the tone shifts dramatically in the other direction. Fortinbras,

whose own barely-limned plot is extremely similar to Hamlet's (his identically-named father

dead, his rise in Norway impeded by his uncle, etc.), in nonetheless Hamlet's opposite. He is a

man of action, a man like Laertes, or Old Hamlet. As Hamlet predicts, he hardly wastes a

moment in declaring his intention to take the throne of Denmark for his own. And, as a final

irony, Fortinbras misunderstands the dead prince, and gives him a soldier’s funeral. Though we

know very little of him, it seems that Fortinbras is the anti-Hamlet – a man who can only

understand others in light of his own simple and straight-forward mind. Hamlet, because he was

a prince, was probably a soldier, so he is given a soldier’s burial. In an exact opposite way,

Hamlet finds a universe of variety within his own mind; he explores the world from many

perspectives, searches many questions, revolves all but resolves nothing. Fortinbras’ arrival

marks the end of the true reign of Hamlet, not Claudius’ petty and incompetent rule, but

Hamlet’s regime of the mind and the possibilities of subjectivity.

Bibliography

Hamlet Study Guide Summary and Analysis of Act 5 GradeSaver.html

The World of English Literature Hamlet The Grave Digger Scene.html

www.shvoong.com › Books

www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/ hamlet /section14.rhtml

thecutestliterature.blogspot.com/2005/.../hamlet-grave-digger-scene