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An analysis of "Hamlet" Act 5"

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  • English
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  • Sixth Year / 12th Grade

This document provides an in-depth analysis and summary of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", with lots of quotes and insights which are easy to understand. This document will help you gain top grades as it did for me, it works as an excellent revision aid and will provide you with inspiration for ess...

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  • June 21, 2024
  • 6
  • 2023/2024
  • Lecture notes
  • Prof harding
  • All classes

Subjects

  • analysis
  • hamlet
  • shakespeare
  • quotes
  • exam revision
  • study aid
  • summary

Written for

  • Secondary school
  • English
  • 5
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ACT 5, Scene I

This scene takes place in a graveyard, which is on church grounds. We see two grave diggers discussing

their work. They are referred to as 1st Clown and 2nd Clown. We see that the way Ophelia died is an issue.

In these times, when someone lost their mind and died as a result, it usually meant they wouldn’t get a

proper funeral. The gravedigger’s remark is that the only reason Ophelia is getting a proper funeral is

because she came from an important family. “If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been

buried out o’ Christian burial”. Later on in the scene, when the funeral arrives, the priest makes a

reference to the same thing. He says, “Her death was doubtful.


Hamlet and Horatio come along as the grave diggers are digging. Hamlet thinks it is very disrespectful

how one of the gravediggers is singing. “Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-

making?”. We remember at this point that Hamlet is a very moral person. He has a strong sense of right

and wrong. We have seen this through the play. He thinks it is wrong for Danes to drink lots of alcohol,

he thinks it’s wrong for a woman to marry her husband’s brother. He thinks it’s wrong for his girlfriend

to refuse to see him. He thinks it is wrong for his two old school friends to spy on him. The greatest

wrong Hamlet encounters in the play is the murder of his father, yet he does nothing about it, until he is

about until he is about to die himself. For a man who is so moral, his treatment of women in this play is

a disgrace. We remember the ghost even had to come back to tell him to take it easy on his mother.


There is a lot of dark humour in this scene. One of the gravediggers starts to talk about Hamlet, not

realising who he is. He says that he’s been sent to England but that his madness won’t be noticed there,

because everyone else there is mad. “Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he”.


Hamlet is strongly linked with death in this scene. We learn that one of the gravediggers got his job in

the graveyard on the very day that Hamlet was born. This fact associates Hamlet with death. Another

reminder of death is the skull that one of the gravediggers finds. It is the skull of a man called Yorick. He

, was the king’s jester or entertainer. Hamlet remembers him carrying him on his back. It is a reminder

that death waits us all, and that very soon, death will come to Hamlet.


Ophelia’s funeral arrives. Hamlet is shocked when he discovers that she’s dead. Both he and Laertes are

really upset by her death. At one stage, the hot-blooded Laertes even verbally attacks the priest who

mentioned Ophelia’s madness, “I tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel shall my sister be, when

thou liest howling”. Laertes gets so upset that he jumps into the grave to hold his sister’s body, “Hold off

the earth awhile, till I have a caught her once more in mine arms”. Hamlet watching this feels he should

be the chief mourner, not Laertes, so he jumps into the grave too! With the words, “This is I, Hamlet the

Dane”. Laertes attacks him, Hamlet is actually quite restrained. He tells Laertes to cool off because he

Hamlet can be quite dangerous when provoked, “Yet have I in me something dangerous”.


We think it is a bit rich and hypocritical when Hamlet announces, “I lov’d Ophelia, forty thousand

brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum”. Throughout this play Hamlet

treated Ophelia very badly.


The scene ends with Claudius telling Laertes that they will put their plan for Hamlet’s death into action.

“Strengthen your patience in our last night’s speech, we’ll put the matter to the present push”.




Scene II (Final Scene)

In this scene, the action of the play returns to Elsinore castle. We see Hamlet and Horatio together.

Hamlet seems very upbeat. He says to Horatio, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends”. What he

means is that we are all governed by fate. He tells Horatio how Claudius had planned to have him killed

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