ACT V, 1: HAMLET’S EXISTENTIAL
COMMENTARY
As the two clowns continue with their humorous dialogue and with their digging of the grave, Hamlet and Horatio enter from the side of the stage. They watch the clowns from a distance, but the clowns do not realize that they are being watched. One of the clowns sings as he is digging, and Hamlet is bothered that the clown does not act more seriously at such a solemn and serious business as digging a grave (lines 61-62). But Hamlet is even more surprised that, as he is digging, the clown finds an old skull and casually and carelessly tosses it aside as if it were a rock. At this point, Hamlet starts to ponder and philosophize about the identity of the skull. Hamlet imagines that the skull might have once belonged to a high-ranking politician (line 72). A second skull that the clown digs up Hamlet imagines as belonging once to an extremely successful lawyer (line 91). Hamlet then asks himself a question: where are the clever words and arguments of that lawyer now? He no longer is able to defend himself, not even against a rude and simple rustic. Hamlet is suggesting the cleverness, the intelligence, and the abilities of the lawyer (or anybody else, for that matter) have disappeared as if they had never existed. All that remains, the only evidence of his existence, is a dirty old skull that a clown can casually kick to the side as if it were some worthless piece of rubbish.
At this point in the play, Hamlet goes to the clowns to speak to them directly and to find out who is going to be buried in the grave. The clowns do not recognize Hamlet, and, during the course of conversation, they tell Hamlet that their young prince has gone mad and was sent to England. Shakespeare uses the comic discourse of the clowns to make a joke about England itself. The clown states that Hamlet will recover his wits, his sanity, in England. But even if he does not, it will not matter. Hamlet asks, “Why?” And the clown responds, “”Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he” (141-43). In other words, everybody in England is mad. Shakespeare’s audience would most certainly have laughed out loud at length upon hearing a line like this.
Later in the conversation the clown tells Hamlet that one of the skulls that he had dug up belonged to Yorick, the court jester of old King Hamlet (lines 160-67). The clown notes that the skull has been in the ground for twenty-three years (which would mean that Hamlet is several years older than 23 in the present time of the play since Hamlet had known Yorick when Hamlet was an infant or toddler). Hamlet holds up the jawless skull and thinks about the past:
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath born me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred my imagination is! (171-73)
The word abhorred means to think with a feeling of horror. Hamlet is horrified to think that someone he knew and loved could come to such an end. Hamlet remembers that Yorick was always full of songs and clever jokes and always kept everybody laughing. His ability to make people laugh was an ability that Hamlet greatly admired. But now he is dead and nearly forgotten. The only reminder of his existence is an old and ugly skull that has only worms for company (memento mori – a reminder of death or mortality). Of course, Yorick is not the only person whom Hamlet has loved and who has died. Hamlet is most likely also thinking about his own father at this time as well. And death, whether it is of Yorick or the old king, is a concept that fills Hamlet with dread and horror.
The finding of Yorick’s skull leads Hamlet’s mind and imagination to more general thoughts about man in general and about the death of man. He tells his friend, “To what base uses we may return, Horatio!” (187). The word base refers to something that is low and insignificant. Hamlet then proceeds to explain how a man may degenerate from someone fine and noble to something low and foul. Hamlet chooses, as his example, one of the noblest and most heroic men of all time, Alexander the Great. Alexander was a Macedonian king in the 4th century, B.C.; and he was the conqueror of Greece, Persia, and Egypt (which had the greatest kingdoms or empires of the Western world at that time in history). But even the remains (the dead body) of Alexander, as Hamlet explains, may end up “stopping a bunghole” (189). A bung-hole was a hole in a cask or barrel that was used for holding beer or other liquid. Obviously, a hole in such a barrel would cause the beer to leak out, so clay was used to cover the hole. Hamlet explains that when a body dies, it turns to dust. The dust mixes with the earth, and loam or clay is made from that earth. And such clay is used to block up holes in beer-barrels (lines 19295). Thus, it is theoretically possible (although highly improbable) that part of Alexander’s noble dust is now performing the lowly task of stopping beer from pouring out of a barrel. Similarly, Hamlet continues, the clay made from Julius Caesar’s body could be used to plaster over a hole in the wall to keep the wind out (lines 196-97).
Hamlet’s existential thoughts about life and death once again suggest that nobility and greatness during life are essentially meaningless. Because no matter how great or how noble one has been in life, the result is the same. Man becomes dust and dirt. Man becomes a lowly material that could be handled by coarse workmen, like the makers of beer barrels or the diggers of graves.
The reader should also note how Hamlet’s philosophizing here is similar to his earlier comments regarding the king, the beggar, the fish, and the worm (in Act IV, Scene 3: 27-31). Both examples suggest a miserable and demeaning outcome for the life of a man.