![]() ![]() Sure, maybe Shakespeare just messed things up. working at the church and graveyard) (5.1.167). The evidence? The First Clown says he's been a gravedigger in Elsinore since "the very day that young Hamlet was born" (5.1.152-153) and a few lines later he reveals that he's been a "sexton" in Denmark for "thirty years" (i.e. By the time Hamlet makes it to the graveyard in Act V, he's apparently thirty years old (much older than the average university student). When the play begins, Hamlet is a university student, which means he's pretty young. There's also a weird part in this scene where Hamlet all of sudden appears to be a lot older than we thought. ![]() He may be contemplative, but he's not melodramatically contemplating suicide or anything. But it also seems like a new, more mature acceptance of a common human fate. Both men, concludes Hamlet, meet the same end and "returneth into dust" (5.1.217). He not only remembers Yorick, a mere jester, but also considers what's become of the body that belonged to Alexander the Great. He thinks about the commonness of death and the vanity of life. ![]() After all of Hamlet's brooding and philosophical contemplation of mortality, Hamlet literally looks death directly in the face right here.Īs you can probably guess, it's a turning point for Hamlet. The skull itself is a physical reminder of the finality of death. Hamlet's constant brooding about death and humanity comes to a (grotesque) head in the infamous graveyard scene, where Hamlet holds up the unearthed skull of Yorick, a court jester Hamlet knew and loved as a young boy. ![]()
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