Online Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses

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Selection 3 

from

William Shakespeare's

 The Tragedy of Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark
 (1601)

(Act  5, Scene 1)

Significance: tragedy modernizes with genre-mixing and dark-comic relief in tragedy;
followed by a burial scene with unusual spectacle,
and possible love-romance b/w Hamlet & Ophelia

[stage directions] and [interpretive notes] are added throughout)

Instructor's note: As tragedy modernizes, it mixes with other genres—for instance, the "gravedigger scene" below in Hamlet provides comic relief, though the wit and humor are dark.

As comedy, this scene largely fulfills Aristotle's description (Poetics 5) that comedy is "an imitation of characters of a lower type." In contrast to Hamlet, who as a prince fulfills Aristotle's prescription (Poetics 15b) that "tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level," the gravediggers operate more as "working-class" characters who are listed as "clowns," which originally meant "peasants" or "country people." (In this regard, they resemble the somewhat-comical guards or watchmen in Antigone and Agamemnon.)

In keeping with the serious tone of tragedy, the humor in this scene can be described as "dark humor" or "dark comedy." For Aristotle, "the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain"—in comedy, that is, pain or damage is inconsequential and easily shaken off.

Dark humor or comedy walks the line, however, between pleasure and pain, as when the gravedigger carelessly tosses out a skull. Dark humor is sometimes called "gallows humor," as in the type of jokes condemned people make on their way to being hanged.

Example of dark or gallows humor: In Stephen King's novel The Tommyknockers (1987), the story is told of a man who is about to be executed and is offered a cigarette by the firing squad leader, whereupon the man about to be executed replies, "No thanks, I'm trying to quit."

Background to scene: After acting like a maniac and killing Polonius (selection 2), Hamlet flees Denmark but in this scene has returned. During Hamlet's absence, his potential bride Ophelia, Polonius's daughter, has herself gone insane with grief and drowned herself. The grave-diggers or "clowns" (i.e., peasants) are preparing a grave for Ophelia's burial.

ACT V, SCENE I. A churchyard. Enter two Clowns, with spades, & c  ["clowns" = peasants, country people; e.g. Aristotle's "low" comic characters]

First Clown [grave-digger]: Is she [Ophelia] to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation? [Since Ophelia committed suicide, can her burial be blessed by a Christian memorial service?]

Second Clown [grave-digger]: I tell thee she is [to be buried so]: and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner* hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial. [*crowner = coroner; "sat on her" = made a decision on her behalf]

First Clown: How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense?

Second Clown: Why, 'tis found so. . . .

First Clown: I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church: argal*, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come. [*argal = blunder for ergo (therefore); the grave-digger's use of the wrong word is typical of low-character humor, which mangles words or uses malapropisms] . . .

[In the speech above, as in comedy the first grave-digger asks a riddle, for which the second grave-digger provides a better answer in the speech below.]

[Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance]

 First Clown: Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass* will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say 'a grave-maker: 'the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan*: fetch me a stoup** of liquor.   [*your dull ass . . . : whipping a stupid donkey won't make it walk faster, but double-entendre; *Yaughan = an ale-house keeper; **stoup = pail or container for a drink]

[Exit Second Clown]

[He digs and sings] [note humorous incongruity between digging a grave and singing]

In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,          [behove = advantage]
O, methought, there was nothing meet.

Hamlet: Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?   [incongruity as wit / humor; Hamlet observes incongruity or mismatch between grave-digger's occupation and his behavior]

Horatio:  Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

Hamlet:  'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.   [i.e., if you don't do the job, you're more sensitive about it]

First Clown:  [Sings]
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land, [intil = into]
As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a skull]

Hamlet:  That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls* it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate [head] of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? [*jowls it = throws or dashes the skull to the ground, with pun on "jowl" as cheek-bone to skull]

Horatio:  It might, my lord.

Hamlet:  Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

Horatio:  Ay, my lord.

Hamlet:  Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless*, and knocked about the mazzard** with a sexton's spade: here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats*** with 'em? mine**** ache to think on't.   [*chapless = lacking the lower jaw; **mazzard = head; ***sexton = churchyard keeper, like gravedigger; ***loggats = game where blocks were thrown at a stake; ****mine = my bones]

 First Clown:  [Sings]
A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another skull]

Hamlet:  There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities [quibbles] now, his quillets [subtleties], his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce [head] with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery [as in assault & battery]? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate [head] full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

Horatio:  Not a jot more, my lord.

Hamlet:  Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

Horatio: Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

Hamlet: They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow [grave-digger]. Whose grave's this, sirrah?

First Clown: Mine, sir.

[Sings]

O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.

Hamlet: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't.    [pun on lie: to lie down and to speak falsehood]

First Clown: You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is mine.

Hamlet:  'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

First Clown: 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away gain, from me to you.

Hamlet: What man dost thou dig it for?

First Clown:  For no man, sir.

Hamlet:  What woman, then?

First Clown: For none, neither.

Hamlet: Who is to be buried in't?

First Clown: One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead.

Hamlet:  How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken a note of it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe. How long hast thou been a grave-maker?       [galls his kibe = steps on his sore feet]

 First Clown:  Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. [the son of Fortinbras appears at end of play]
Hamlet:  How long is that since?

First Clown: Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.

Hamlet: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?

First Clown:  Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there.

Hamlet: Why?

First Clown: 'Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

Hamlet: How came he mad?

First Clown: Very strangely, they say.

Hamlet: How strangely?

First Clown: Faith, e'en with losing his wits. . . .

First Clown:  . . .  Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth three and twenty years.  

Hamlet: Whose was it?
 
First Clown: A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?

Hamlet: Nay, I know not.

First Clown:  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of Rhenish [wine] on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

Hamlet: This?

First Clown: E'en that.

Hamlet: Let me see.

[Takes the skull]

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. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. [*gorge rims = feel nauseous]

Horatio: What's that, my lord?

Hamlet: Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

Horatio: E'en so.

Hamlet: And smelt so? pah!

[Puts down the skull] . . .


[Enter Priest, & c. in procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES [Ophelia's brother] and Mourners following; KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, their trains, & c]

The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow?
And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
The corse they follow did with desperate hand    [corse = corpse, body]
Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate.
Couch we awhile, and mark.           [couch = lie low, crouch]

[Retiring with HORATIO]

Laertes: What ceremony else?

Hamlet: That is Laertes, A very noble youth: mark.  

Laertes:  What ceremony else?      [i.e., "Won't there be more of a burial service?"; Laertes as brother to the Ophelia wants his sister to be buried with full honorary rites, which the priest below refuses on the grounds that "her death was doubtful"—that is, her possible suicide would prevent her from being buried in sanctified ground]

First Priest:  Her obsequies have been as far enlarged      [obsequies = funeral rites]
As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful;                     [warrantise = permission]
And, but that great command o'ersways the order,
She should in ground unsanctified have lodged
Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers,
Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her;
Yet here she is allow'd her virgin rites,
Her maiden strewments and the bringing home
Of bell and burial.

Laertes: Must there no more be done?

First Priest:  No more be done:
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.

Laertes: Lay her i' the earth:
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,     [churlish = rude]
A ministering angel shall my sister be,
When thou liest howling.                      ["howling": i.e., in hell]

Hamlet: What, the fair Ophelia!    [For the first time Hamlet realizes that the body intended for burial is that of Ophelia, whom he was expected to marry]

Queen Gertrude:  Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

[Scattering flowers]

I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.

Laertes: O, treble woe                                     [treble = triple]
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head,           [that cursed head = Hamlet]
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms:    [Don't make too much of it, but does Laertes love his sister too much?]

[Leaps into the grave]                                                          [spectacle!]

Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made,
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head                           [Pelion, Olympus = mythic Greek mountains]
Of blue Olympus.

Hamlet: [Advancing] 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? This is I,
Hamlet the Dane.

[Leaps into the grave]                                                    [spectacle]

Laertes: The devil take thy soul!

[Grappling with him]                                                    [spectacle]

 Hamlet:  Thou pray'st not well.
I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,         [splenitive = splenetic, irritable]
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

King Claudius: Pluck them asunder. [separate them]
Queen Gertrude: Hamlet, Hamlet!

All: Gentlemen,—

Horatio: Good my lord, be quiet.

[The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave]

Hamlet:   Why I will fight with him upon this theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

Queen Gertrude:  O my son, what theme?

Hamlet:  I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?

King Claudius:  O, he is mad, Laertes.

Queen Gertrude: For love of God, forbear him.  [forbear = put up with; Gertrude speaks to Laertes of Hamlet]

Hamlet: 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:   ['Swounds = zounds]
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?   [Woo't? = Would you?]
Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?                             [eisel = vinegar]
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?     [Are we competing over who loved Ophelia more?]
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw          [prate = talk, chatter]
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,           [Ossa = another mountain in Greece]
I'll rant as well as thou.

Queen Gertrude:  This is mere madness:
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;    [him = Hamlet]
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

Hamlet:  Hear you, sir;                                   [sir = Laertes]
What is the reason that you use me thus?
I loved you ever: but it is no matter;   [Hamlet reminds Laertes that they were friends]
Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

[Exit]

King Claudius:  I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him.   [keep an eye on Hamlet]

[Exit Horatio]

[Claudius speaks to Laertes]

Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;
We'll put the matter to the present push.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.
This grave shall have a living monument:
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience our proceeding be.

[Exeunt]

[Instructor's note: Claudius's concluding speech above to Laertes begins setting up the murder plot against Hamlet in the play's final scene (Selection 4).]

On to 4th selection from Hamlet

Back to Selections from Hamlet Index