Clavis Libri

Literary device

Euphemism

Saying in a soft, indirect or disguised way something harsh, ugly or forbidden to name.

In Hamlet

The rest is silence.

A few lines earlier, Hamlet had said he was dying; in the last sentence he no longer names death. “The rest is silence” softens the end and presents it as a pause in speech, which fits the character who spoke the most throughout the play.

Act V: Graveyard and duel, Hamlet