Hamlet – Act V scene i: The Gravediggers’ Scene
1. The Gravediggers’ Scene is the only humorous scene in the play. Why do you think Shakespeare would
choose to place a comedic scene at this point in his tragedy?
2. Elizabethans were much more used to hearing puns, thus they would get all the jokes that we sometimes
miss. Where does Shakespeare use wordplay (either from the clowns or from Hamlet) in this scene?
3. What explanation does the gravedigger give for the proper funeral preparations that are given to Ophelia?
4. Compare the gravedigger’s comments about action (line 10 – “to act, to do, and to perform”) to those of
Hamlet. How does Hamlet view action or taking action differently?
5. Explain the gravedigger’s riddle about suicide and graves. (see line 15; lines 35-50)
6. What’s humorous about the exchange between Hamlet and the gravediggers?
7. How do Hamlet’s comments about Yorick and Caesar compare and/or contrast to his earlier thoughts about
the afterlife and this life?
Alas, Poor Yorick! Hamlet and Three Views of Death
Below are three views of death found in Hamlet. Read each and then find additional examples of each view.
1. Death as a release from life: In his first soliloquy (Act I, scene ii), Hamlet says,
“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasing had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!”
2. What lines from Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy (Act III, scene i) reflect this same view of
death as a release from life?
3. Death as corruption in the grave: In Act IV, scene iii, Hamlet answers the King’s question, “Now,
Hamlet, where’s Polonius?” by saying, “Not where he eats, but where his is eaten. A certain
convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all
creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots…”
4. What speeches by either Hamlet or the clown in Act V, scene I, illustrate this theme of corruption in
the grave?
5. Death as a waste of life: Near the end of the play (Act V, scene ii) Fortinbras says:
“O proud Death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot,
So bloodily has struck?”
6. What speech by Fortinbras in Act V, scene ii illustrates his view that Hamlet’s death is a waste of life?
7. Which of these three views do you most agree with? Why? Are there any other views of death that
you believe were not included that should be?
Death as a recurring theme
Image of Corruption:
King’s speech to Hamlet in Act I scene ii (…the death of fathers…)
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound
In filial obligation for some term
To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
Ghost in Act I scene v (description of terror behind the grave)
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” speech
To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
Hamlet’s morbid fascination with Yorick’s skull in the graveyard scene
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it.
Death and decay of the human body
Hamlet comments on the inevitability of death and the idea of death and decay, as seen in his comments about the
clowns’ attitudes and musings on Alexander the Great’s death.