Hamlet Eight Blog

Hamlet Eight Blog 

Throughout the play Hamlet ponders what happens after death, especially what happens to the soul. Between his religion and the ghost’s visit Hamlet seems pretty confident in the existence of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. During act V scene i he is faced with the questions of what happens to the physical body after death. When he and Horatio meet the gravedigger, the gravedigger is in the process of digging Ophelia’s grave and uproots many other corpses as he works. Upon seeing a tossed skull, Hamlet says, “How / the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ‘twere Cain’s / jawbone, that did the first murder” (V.i. 69-71). Hamlet criticizes the gravedigger for throwing a skull as if it were the skull of one of the most infamous murderers in all of Christianity and believes it should be treated better by not being dug up and definitely not being thrown. He then goes on to say, “Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play / at loggets with them? Mine ache to think on ’t” (V.i. 83-84). Hamlet is shocked that someone’s grave can be dug up so unceremoniously and questions if a body, once it is dead, is worth so little that its unearthing is considered necessary and even acceptable. He states that this makes him uneasy and uncomfortable because during the play he never questions what happens to a person’s physical remains and how they are treated, and seeing the lack of respect they receive is jarring for Hamlet. He then sees another skull and wonders what that person was like in life. He randomly guesses that they might have been a lawyer and mourns their loss: “To have his fine pate full of fine dirt?” (V.i. 97). Hamlet is bothered by the fact that someone so respectable in life is treated so disrespectfully in death and that all his earthly possessions and accomplishments are now worthless and meaningless. When speaking to the gravedigger, who does not know he is Hamlet, about Hamlet’s madness, Hamlet suddenly changes the subject: “How long will a man lie i’ th’ earth ere he rot?” (V.i. 147). Hamlet’s question, which was completely unrelated to their conversation, shows that he is now concerned about the physical effects of death and what they do to a body, showing that Hamlet has some newfound worries about death, whereas before he only worried about the soul. When the gravedigger brings up yet another skull and says that the copse used to be a jester for King Hamlet, Hamlet recognizes the name and recalls his childhood with the jester: “He hath bore me / on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred / in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft” (V.i. 168-171). Hamlet is simultaneously saddened and disgusted by seeing the jester’s corpse. He mourns the loss of someone whom he used to be so close to, but he is also appalled by the state the body is in due to rot and decay and by the idea of having physical interactions with something that he can only now picture as horrendous. Hamlet then questions Horatio if Alexander the Great’s body is in a similar state, and receives an affirmative answer. At this point it dawns on Hamlet that everyone from a mere jester to a great warrior will rot away one day, including his father and himself. Although their souls may have different fates, everyone will be affected by the same physical ailments and disfigurations once they die. Most revenge stories end poorly for the person seeking revenge, so Hamlet is probably aware that there is a good chance he will die while seeking Claudius’s death. He is a religious person, so he has most likely accepted the fate of his soul already, but seeing all these corpses and realizing he will be like them gives Hamlet a reason to doubt if death is something for which he is prepared. During act V scene i Hamlet is forced to view death from a perspective that he never saw before, and he realizes that once a person dies, regardless of who they were, they will be treated equally yet also terribly, they are worthless, everything they possessed or achieved is meaningless, and they will rot and decay to the point where they are repulsive even to loved ones. All of these factors make Hamlet doubt whether or not he is able to tolerate the possibility of his death.