A Circus Surrounded By Death

5 Pages 1229 Words

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he creates different scenes that contrast the previous scene. One of these contrasts occurs in 5.1, in the graveyard. The common reader has preconceived perceptions of a graveyard. Those opinions consist of mostly unpleasant thoughts and images. Before the graveyard, Shakespeare created a dramatic scene which consisted of Queen Gertrude telling Laertes that his sister, Ophelia had drowned. Gertrude says, “One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, / So fast they follow. Your sister’s drown’d Laertes” (4.7.163-164). Shakespeare has created a somber mood already which adds to 5.1 right off by talking about a graveyard. However, it is at this point that Shakespeare twists the play’s mood.
Act five, scene one, opens with two “gravediggers” who are considered “clowns.” The purpose of these characters is to act as a comic relief. This is necessary after the tension of Ophelia’s death and the tone of most of the play. Just a few lines before, Queen Gertrude gave a very depressing image of Ophelia, “When down her weedy trophies and herself / Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, / And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up” (4.7.174-176). Right after the reader reads this image, the play moves to “clowns” digging a grave. They go back-and-forth discussing why the corpse is being given a “Christian Burial.” The “clowns” chatter amongst each other about the situation, “Is she to be buried in Christian burial when / she willfully seeks her own salvation? / I tell thee she is, therefore make her grave / straight. The crowner hath sate on her and finds it Christian burial” (5.1.1-5). The chit-chat about something that meant so much to another person previously, creates a little humor for the reader. It makes the reader lighten up about something that was formerly so dramatic.
The “clowns” continue to talk to each other, still pondering why she was receivi...