Hamlet notices that the burial is less elaborate than usual, signifying that the deceased was a suicide. He takes up the skull and speaks about Yorick, a topic that leads him to consider the nature of mortality more generally.Ī procession interrupts Hamlet’s reveries – Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes march toward the grave along with a priest and an entourage bearing a body. Hamlet is amazed – he knew Yorick and loved him as a child. The gravedigger says that this is the skull of Yorick, the old king’s jester. He then produces a skull from the grave that he says has been lying there for twenty-three years. The gravedigger informs Hamlet about the length of time it takes bodies to decay in the ground.
Hamlet approaches the gravedigger and exchanges witticisms about this morbid work. As the gravediggers throws various skulls out of the grave, Hamlet wonders whom they might have belonged to in life – whether a courtier or a lawyer. Hamlet appears fascinated by the gravedigger’s indifference to the gravity of his profession. The main gravedigger sends his partner off for a cup of liquor and then commences to dig, singing songs all the while. After some witty and macabre banter on the nature of gravedigging, Hamlet and Horatio enter. We learn that the king has overridden the objections of the clergy and provided for her burial. They repeat a rumor that Ophelia committed suicide and wonder whether she ought to be buried in hallowed ground. The final Act begins with a conversation between two gravediggers as they dig Ophelia’s grave.
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