Summary: Act V, scene i
In the churchyard, two gravediggers shovel out a grave
for Ophelia. They argue whether Ophelia should be buried in the
churchyard, since her death looks like a suicide. According to religious
doctrine, suicides may not receive Christian burial. The first gravedigger,
who speaks cleverly and mischievously, asks the second gravedigger
a riddle: “What is he that builds stronger than either the mason,
the shipwright, or the carpenter?” (V.i.46–47).
The second gravedigger answers that it must be the gallows-maker,
for his frame outlasts a thousand tenants. The first gravedigger
corrects him, saying that it is the gravedigger, for his “houses”
will last until Doomsday.
Hamlet and Horatio enter at a distance and watch the gravediggers
work. Hamlet looks with wonder at the skulls they excavate to make
room for the fresh grave and speculates darkly about what occupations
the owners of these skulls served in life: “Why may not that be
the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now . . . ?” (V.i.90–91).
Hamlet asks the gravedigger whose grave he digs, and the gravedigger
spars with him verbally, first claiming that the grave is his own,
since he is digging it, then that the grave belongs to no man and
no woman, because men and women are living things and the occupant
of the grave will be dead. At last he admits that it belongs to
one “that was a woman sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead” (V.i.146).
The gravedigger, who does not recognize Hamlet as the prince, tells
him that he has been a gravedigger since King Hamlet defeated the
elder Fortinbras in battle, the very day on which young Prince Hamlet
was born. Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him
that the skull belonged to Yorick, King Hamlet’s jester. Hamlet
tells Horatio that as a child he knew Yorick and is appalled at
the sight of the skull. He realizes forcefully that all men will
eventually become dust, even great men like Alexander the Great
and Julius Caesar. Hamlet imagines that Julius Caesar has disintegrated and
is now part of the dust used to patch up a wall.
Suddenly, the funeral procession for Ophelia enters the
churchyard, including Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and many mourning courtiers.
Hamlet, wondering who has died, notices that the funeral rites seem
“maimed,” indicating that the dead man or woman took his or her
own life (V.i.242). He and Horatio hide as
the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth,
Hamlet realizes it is she who has died. At the same moment, Laertes
becomes infuriated with the priest, who says that to give Ophelia
a proper Christian burial would profane the dead. Laertes leaps
into Ophelia’s grave to hold her once again in his arms. Grief-stricken and
outraged, Hamlet bursts upon the company, declaring in agonized
fury his own love for Ophelia. He leaps into the grave and fights
with Laertes, saying that “forty thousand brothers / Could not,
with all their quantity of love, / make up my sum” (V.i.254–256).
Hamlet cries that he would do things for Ophelia that Laertes could
not dream of—he would eat a crocodile for her, he would be buried
alive with her. The combatants are pulled apart by the funeral company.
Gertrude and Claudius declare that Hamlet is mad. Hamlet storms
off, and Horatio follows. The king urges Laertes to be patient,
and to remember their plan for revenge.
Read a translation of
Act V, scene i →
Analysis
The gravediggers are designated as “clowns” in the stage
directions and prompts, and it is important to note that in Shakespeare’s
time the word clown referred to a rustic or peasant, and did not
mean that the person in question was funny or wore a costume.
The gravediggers represent a humorous type commonly found
in Shakespeare’s plays: the clever commoner who gets the better
of his social superior through wit. At the Globe Theater, this type
of character may have particularly appealed to the “groundlings,”
the members of the audience who could not afford seats and thus
stood on the ground. Though they are usually figures of merriment,
in this scene the gravediggers assume a rather macabre tone, since
their jests and jibes are all made in a cemetery, among bones of
the dead. Their conversation about Ophelia, however, furthers
an important theme in the play: the question of the moral legitimacy
of suicide under theological law. By giving this serious subject
a darkly comic interpretation, Shakespeare essentially makes a grotesque
parody of Hamlet’s earlier “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (III.i),
indicating the collapse of every lasting value in the play into
uncertainty and absurdity.
Hamlet’s confrontation with death, manifested primarily
in his discovery of Yorick’s skull, is, like Ophelia’s drowning,
an enduring image from the play. However, his solemn theorizing
explodes in grief and rage when he sees Ophelia’s funeral procession,
and his assault on Laertes offers a glimpse of what his true feelings
for Ophelia might once have been. Laertes’ passionate
embrace of the dead Ophelia again advances the subtle motif of incest
that hangs over their brother-sister relationship. Interestingly,
Hamlet never expresses a sense of guilt over Ophelia’s death, which
he indirectly caused through his murder of Polonius. In fact, the only
time he even comes close to taking responsibility for Polonius’s
death at all comes in the next and last scene, when he apologizes
to Laertes before the duel, blaming his “madness” for Polonius’s
death. This seems wholly inadequate, given that Hamlet has previously
claimed repeatedly only to be feigning madness. But by the same
token, to expect moral completeness from a character as troubled
as Hamlet might be unrealistic. After all, Hamlet’s defining characteristics
are his pain, his fear, and his self-conflict. Were he to take full
responsibility for the consequences of Polonius’s death, he would
probably not be able to withstand the psychological torment of the
resulting guilt.