COMIC RELIEF
What a piece of work is a man…
What is this quintessence of dust?
Comic Relief

The use of a funny scene to interrupt
a succession of intensely dramatic
moments
Other Comic Relief Scenes in
Shakespeare

The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet
Other Comic Relief Scenes…

The Porter in Macbeth
Comic Relief in Hamlet

Act V, scene I – the gravedigger’s
scene
C.S. LEWIS

“Then comes the comic relief…surely
the strangest comic relief ever
written-comic relief beside an open
grave, with a further discussion of
suicide…”
Through Shakespeare’s Eyes by Joseph
Pearce
Hamlet Comic Relief


Up to this point in the play, Polonius
has provided comic relief.
But both Polonius and Ophelia are now
dead.
Solid facts about comic relief




Shakespeare uses lower class people
to play such scenes
Allows a freer use of vulgarity and
earthiness
Comedy is full of topical references
(based on events of the day)
Often uses puns, slapstick, and riddles
The Gravediggers



Also referred to as
the clowns
Medieval clown
were often used to
play up physical and
vulgar comedy
As buffoons, able
to talk about risky
topics

“Here’s a skull…”
Topical References



Suicide – a double standard where the
Church was concerned
A richer person who committed suicide
more likely to be buried with proper
burial
“If this had not been a gentlewoman,
she should have been buried out o’
Christian burial” (V.i.24 – 26).
Elizabethan View of Suicide


Saw those who committed suicide as
“perpetrators not as victims”
Guilty of felonia de ipso or felo de sea vile crime against oneself.
http://elsinore.ucsc.edu/burial/burial/
Suicide.html
Church’s View



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Despair seen as an unforgivable sin against
God
Despair might be the vehicle of the Devil
(Horatio afraid that the ghost “might tempt
Hamlet toward the flood” or off a cliff)
Excluded from God’s grace
Denied Christian burial (Ophelia receives
“maimed rites.”); “lodged in grounds
unsanctified” (232).
Burial Very Harsh
…a woman who committed suicide received the
following treatment:
…carried from her sayd howse to some
cross way neare the townes end and theare
tht should ha (ve) stake dreven thorowgh
her brest and so be buried with the stake to
be scene for a memorayll that others goinge
by myght take heede…
Richard Greaves, Society and Religion in
Elizabethan England, p. 535.
Sidenote
Exceptions were sometimes made for those
who were determined to be “not in their
right minds.”
 Perhaps Ophelia falls into this category.
 “Of the 803 verdicts delivered to the King’s
Bench in the decade before the writing of
Hamlet, only 5” were determined to be
insane.
 http://elsinore.ucsc.edu/burial/burial
Suicide. html

Gravedigger and Hamlet


Battle of wits between clown and
Hamlet
Hamlet doesn’t win!
Comic Elements Used in Scene

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Puns
Malapropisms
Irony
Slapstick
Riddles
Comic Elements

Puns – play on words
‘A was the first that ever bore arms.
(l. 34)
Could he dig without arms? (l.38)
Malapropismsmixing/confusing/substituting words in a
comic manner

“It must be se offendendo.”
(self offense!)
Skull


Used as centerpiece on Elizabethan
banquet tables
Serves as a memento mori- a reminder
of death (as if a person needs to be
reminded after reading 4 acts of
Hamlet!)
Carpe diem

Seize the day!
2.

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Whether or not Ophelia should be
buried in Christian cemetery
Is she to be buried in Christian burial
when she willfully seeks her own
salvation? 1-2
3.

Who is he who builds stronger than a
mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?
3. con’t.

The gravemaker-his houses “last until
doomsday” 60
4. Comic elements

See other notes
5.

Yorick was the king’s jester. Hamlet
knew him. Seeing his skull
personalizes the “corruption” of the
body
5.

Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and
tell her let her paint an inch thick, to
this favor she must come.194-6
6.
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The physical body decays-could be
used for mortar or to stop a beer
barrel.
Alexander the Great, a world
conqueror, becomes loam
Caesar plugs up a wall to keep out the
wind.
7.

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Her death was doubtful (questionable)
The priest thinks she should not have
had even the prayers that she
did...just “shards and pebbles”
8
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“40, 000 brothers…could not make up
my sum…” l. 274 on
Hamlet jumps into the grave with
Laertes-fights him