Hamlet Act 5 Notes

Scene 1
The gravediggers scene shows a great deal about the character of hamlet. Hamlet questions their frivolous nature when the joke about the dead. As they unearth skulls, hamlet ponders who they might have been and if they though highly of themselves and were pompous during their lifetimes. When one of the skulls is identified as Yorick, Hamlet becomes very thoughtful and ponders about life and death. He says no matter how high a person might be in life, in death, all are equal. Death is the great neutralizer making the king no greater than a pauper. This isn’t the first time Hamlet ponders life, its meaning and death. Most of his soliloquies get into these subjects such as the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. But this pondering at the sight of what seems to be Ophelia’s grave, shows what a deep thinker he is even in the midst of much personal turmoil, he is a man who thinks about man’s existence and its meaning. This pondering in the graveyard scene shows the audience that Hamlet isn’t terribly afraid of death, he is more curious than afraid. This brings out Hamlet’s intellectual curiosity and his speculative powers. He goes on to speculate that even Alexander the Great will have his corpse buried in the ground and decomposed and that nobility in life is cancelled out by death.

Hamlet has lost his father. Now dear Ophelia is dead. His losses are great. He has only reconciled wit his mother, and no one else but Horatio is there to take his part. He feels lonely and longs for the days when his family was whole and he could spend his time innocently with Ophelia. Loss, confusion, anger for the king’s actions and depression must reign over hamlet when he compares life as it used to be with the life he has now.

By this point of the play, Hamlet has been through quite a lot. He found out his uncle killed his father, he is extremely upset over his mother’s remarriage to his uncle, his deteriorating relationship with Ophelia, his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betraying him, accidentally killing Polonius, and his uncle sending him t England to be executed which he luckily discovered and rewrote the note, but all in all, he is still in a bad situation. Hamlet is quite pleased with himself for doing what he had to do to preserve his own life and he is rather philosophical in discussion of what happens after death. He comes to the very logical conclusion that no matter who a person is in life, he merely return to dust after death. Whether the dead person was a great man like Alexander the Great, or a common man, both end up as worm food. Hamlet has worried about death and what comes after, and has talked about it through out the play but this is the first time he has seen it in such simple terms. This realization helps him take action against Claudius. As death becomes more real to him (like when he actually holds Yorick’s skull, a man whom he knew well) he realizes that death is a certainty and that it will come for all.

“Hamlet the Dane”

Point 1: What's most important to note here is the capital "D" in Dane. Hamlet is not merely referring to himself as a citizen of Denmark, but as The Citizen of Denmark--i.e., the rightful king. We haven't really heard anything about whether or not he wants to be King...except for his wry comment to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in 3.2 when he states he "lacks advancement." This is an oblique commentary on his royal status (or lack of). But here, in 5.1, he recklessly jumps forward, filled with rage at Laertes, and declares himself the rightful King.
Why does he choose to do so now? Perhaps his rage alone propels him to admit this deeply held thought. Perhaps, since he is so bent on showing Laertes that he loved Ophelia more, he feels he can "one-up" Laertes even more by identifying himself as royalty. He then follows up this bold, public statement by mentioning to Horatio in 5.2 how Claudius "popped in between th' election and my hopes," indicating that he was, indeed, hoping to be elected as King.
This begs the larger question: WAS Hamlet solely motivated to kill Claudius just to avenge his father's death? Or did he have some selfish motives as well (knowing that he would be the shoo-in for King if Claudius weren't around anymore...)?

Point 2: Hamlet is proclaiming his identity. Earlier in the play, he has imagined his death, his act of revenge and he has lost himself. Here he is asserting who he is. The fact that he refers to himself as the Dane, implies he is the citizen of Denmark and he will fight for justice, not just for himself but for his country.
What is relevant is this moment that he reveals his identity. Why does he wait till Ophelia dies to assert himself? Is to prove to Laertes that he loved Ophelia more or is it that now Ophelia is dead he can act?
Just an additional note, a lot of strong characters assert their identity before their death i.e. Cleopatra from Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra. Maybe here there is a foreshadowing of Hamlet's death as well his assertion of his identity.

“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum”

Hamlet declares his love for Ophelia as she is lying in her grave and as unexpectedly, he has witnessed the scene of her burial. In fact his declaration of love is a reaction to that of Laertes, the young woman's brother who has in a very short span of time lost his father (assassinated by mistake by Hamlet) and his beloved sister whose death he can also blame on the young prince. It is indeed her madness which has killed Ophelia. She has, in a way, let her life go and Hamlet, alone, is responsible for that. First because he has, feigning madness, rejected her, and second because he (the man she loved) has killed her father. Therefore, Laertes has all the reasons in the world to hate Hamlet. But Hamlet has no reason to hate Laertes. However it is to defy him that he tries to show that he loved the young man's sister better than him. It is this need to aggress Laertes which triggers his passion and leads him to declare that "forty thousand brothers / Could not, with all their quantity of love, / Make up [his] sum."
Why does he aggress Laertes thus? Most probably to take the lead, the advantage, not to let Laertes have the time to aggress him first. By attacking him (here, verbally) he protects himself from an attack he instinctively fears. And to give himself strength, he loses all sense of measure to "outface" Ophelia's brother: He dares him to do crazy things like "eating a crocodile", and like Laertes, wishes to be buried in the young woman's grave, trying here again to outface him. "let them throw / Millions of acres on us, till our ground / Singeing his pate against the burning zone, / Make Ossa like a wart." Faced with his mirror opposite, a man who is all impassioned action and few words, Hamlet grapples to prove that he loved Ophelia though he was unable to demonstrate his feelings for her.
Finally realizing he has been talking nonsense, he confesses "I'll rant as well as thou." And this remark, shows at the same time, the exaggeration of Laertes's demonstrations of pain, but it can also make us doubt of Hamlet's own love. Has he just been "ranting"? Has he been sincere?

In fact, as we have seen it above, the nature of Hamlet's strange love for Ophelia is determined by his weak personality

“And from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring”

Laertes’ super-objective is to publicly appear honorable, honest and virtuous. I know this because when Laertes confronts the King with ‘riotous head’ to be revenged (/) Most thoroughly for (his) father’ (4.5 135,6), his appearance of honor is clear. Similarly Laertes appears honest and virtuous at Ophelia’s funeral: ‘from her fair and unpolluted flesh (/) May violets spring’ (5.1 241,2). Osric says Laertes is ‘an absolute gentleman an d one ‘shall find in him the (/) continent of what part a gentleman would see’ (5.2 111,2). Laertes highlights his need to appear honorable when he tells Hamlet ‘no reconcilement (/) Till by…masters of known honour (/) I have a voice…(/) To keep my name ungorged’ (5.2). The appearance rather than the reality of Laertes’ honor is underlined by his falseness: (I) ‘will not wrong it’ (Hamlet’s offer of love). The speech serves Laertes’ super-objective because it highlights Laertes’ public confession of his guilt: ‘the foul practice hath turned itself on me’ (5.2 18-19), thus making him appear honest and honorable. violets also carry meanings of faithfulness, humility, and chastity. Looking back to Ophelia’s distribution of the flowers, violets stood for faithfulness. Laertes then says that

Yorick’s skull

Hamlet's speech echoes popular themes of Shakespeare's time. The events Hamlet describes present a picture of youth. Yorick's life, as Hamlet understands it, was a colorful collection of games, jokes and songs. By contrast, in death, Yorick is colorless, a macabre spectacle that unsettles Hamlet's mind.
These conflicting elements speak to a common artistic motif of the Renaissance: the theme of vanitas. According to many Renaissance artists, the splendor of life was ultimately transient. Wealth and status were meaningless in the grave. A common Renaissance sentiment was "memento mori," Latin for "remember you will die." Hamlet's reflections on Yorick substantiate this contemporary belief: the cheerful jester has been reduced to an unsmiling set of bones.
Despite his protestations of his dead father's greatness, Hamlet did not really have a very happy household growing up. His father was, indeed, a great military ruler, off conquering and governing conquered lands. The closest thing Hamlet had to an affectionate father was likely Yorick, the court jester, from whom he likely learned his excellent wit, his macabre sense of humor, and many more of his most Hamlet-esque characteristics. This is a moment of pure and deep contemplation of death. The fact of mortality is staring at Hamlet in the face. Yorick's skull is a very powerful memento mori, a reminder of death -- no matter how much you try to stave off aging, Hamlet says, you're inevitably doomed to be like Yorick, a dirty and lipless skull buried in the ground, forgotten by all but the gravediggers. This sort of reminder was quite common in the Renaissance, with its plagues and its widespread starvation. Death was much more familiar to them than it is to us. Nevertheless, despite our modern dreams of scientific immortality, the universal truth of this final destination still holds.
“No Shriving Time Allowed”
Hamlet tells Horatio with glee that he sent rosen and guilden to their deaths, ordering no shriving time allowed. Hamlet’s decision to send his old friends to death against whom he alleges nothing but meddling, and possibly not having any knowledge of the order to kill him as soon as he sets foot in England. Yet hamlet is put in a situation so unwelcome o him, so that when he does take action, he plunges into his role with willful violence.
This is also ironic because here, he is playing god, and in literature, when a character plays god, things d not end well. This ironically foreshadows Hamlet dying without shriving time at the end of the play, just as he did to R&G.
Scene 2

“Popped in between th’ elections and my hopes”

Claudius has killed Hamlet's father and "whored" his mother because, given that Claudius was formerly Gertrude's brother-in-law, their marriage was viewed as incestuous in Elizabethan times. But that is only the beginning of his evil: Claudius has also come between Hamlet and the throne, for the Danish monarchy was not hereditary but by popular election, and Hamlet had a chance at winning. The council would have been under great pressure to elect a king quickly and Claudius, older, more experienced than young Hamlet, and, most important, there, would have been the logical choice. Hamlet specifically says that Claudius "popped in between the election and my hopes." He was right. If that is true, then Claudius would not have needed to marry Gertrude to secure the throne. In fact, she would have needed to marry him to maintain her position as ruling Queen. In that case, it would seem that Claudius married Gertrude for love. Or perhaps a combination of love and a need to prevent a civil war resulting from a challenge to his throne by Hamlet.

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends/ Rough-hew them how we will”. He now believes in a divine purpose behind everything that human beings do, in the idea that (even if we don’t know it at the time) there is a grand pattern. All of his recent good luck appears to Hamlet as proof that he has been saved from death for a greater purpose – to get revenge on Claudius and thus serve him with the divine justice he deserves for his crimes.
“He should those bearers put to sudden death/ not shriving-time allowed” Hamlet’s deceitful replacement of Claudius’ letter to the King of England with one of his own ordering the execution of Ros. & Guild, and his lack of remorse at their deaths reveals how morally tainted he has become in the course of the play by the deception and betrayal that surrounds him.
“They are nor near my conscience, their defeat/ Does by their own insinuation grow” Hamlet feels that they have only got what they deserved for getting mixed up with a villain like Claudius. He assumes that they knew about the plot to have him killed.
“He that hath killed my king, and whored my mother/ Popped in between th’ election and my hopes/ Thrown out his angle for my proper life” This is a summary of all of Hamlet’s grievances with Claudius – he killed his father, turned his mother into a slut, prevented Hamlet from gaining the throne, and then attempted to have him killed.
“I am very sorry, good Horatio/ That to Laertes I forgot myself/ For by the image of my cause I see/ The portraiture of his”. Hamlet regrets his row with Laertes, because he realises that Laertes has a just reason for seeking vengence, and that in thus they are very much alike.
“I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits”. Hamlet casually accepts the invitation to a duel, as though he has nothing to lose
“Thou wouldst not think how ill’s here about my heart… a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman”. He is filled with a sense of foreboding, his spirit is troubled, but he suspects this is no more than womanly cowardice and superstition.
“If it be now ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come”. Hamlet has lost all fear of death – he believes that if his time has come, there is nothing he can do about it. (Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be).
“Give me your pardon sir, I have done you wrong…What I have done…I here proclaim was madness”. Hamlet asks Laertes to forgive him, he did not knowingly kill his father.
“How does the queen?…O villainy. Ho, let the door be locked…The point envenomed too?/ Then venom to thy work.” Hamlet stabs the King, then forces him to drink poison. His mother’s death finally provokes Hamlet to action. It is fitting that Claudius is killed with the weapons he himself poisoned in order to kill Hamlet.
“Heaven make thee free of it” Hamlet offers Laertes forgiveness as he lies dying.
“If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart/ Absent thee from felicity awhile/ And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/ To tell my story”. Hamlet begs Horatio on his deathbed to tell the truth to the world and thus protect his memory beyond the grave.
“I do prophesy th’ election lights/ On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice…the rest is silence”. Hamlet’s final words reveal his noble concern for the future of the kingdom, even as he lies dying.
After his death great tributes are paid to him by both Horatio & Fortinbras. Horatio says “goodnight sweet prince and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” and Fortinbras comments “Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royal“.