The Theme in the Work
The play begins with a death that will not rest. In scene 1 of Act I, the sentinels see the Ghost, with the face and armor of the dead king, and in scene 2 of Act I the court asks Hamlet to abandon mourning, to which he answers that what he has within exceeds appearance. In scene 5 of Act I, the Ghost says that he is held in torment until he purges his crimes, dead without confession, and that he was poisoned by Claudius.
In scene 1 of Act III, death becomes a question. In the soliloquy “to be or not to be,” Hamlet weighs dying as sleeping, and what holds him back is not the punishment reserved for the suicide but what may lie on the other side: dreams, and an undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns. In scene 4 of Act III, death becomes a sudden fact: Hamlet thrusts through the curtain and kills Polonius, and drags away the body.
In scene 1 of Act V, death becomes matter. Two gravediggers dig Ophelia’s grave and debate whether a suicide deserves Christian burial, and Hamlet, before the skulls, thinks of the death that levels the powerful and the beggar and, on learning from the gravedigger that one of the skulls is Yorick’s, the court jester of his father, is shaken. In scene 2 of Act V, the royal family dies entirely in the duel.
The play makes death run through three registers and lets Hamlet accept only the last. Death as apparition, the father who returns to demand, holds him. Death as question, the soliloquy, paralyzes him. Death as matter, the skull with a name and a past, is the one he can look at without fleeing, and it is after looking at it that the prince who hesitated begins to say that being ready is enough.
Where It Appears
- scene 1 of Act I: On the battlements, at midnight, Marcellus, Bernardo and Horatio see the Ghost, with the face and armor of the dead king, which vanishes, returns again and, when the cock crows, departs.
- scene 2 of Act I: Claudius asks Hamlet to abandon mourning for his father and stay at Elsinore, without returning to Wittenberg, and the queen insists.
- scene 5 of Act I: Alone with Hamlet, the Ghost says that Claudius poured poison into his ear while he slept in the orchard, and that he is held in torment until he purges his crimes.
- scene 1 of Act III: Hamlet, speaking alone, compares dying to sleeping, asks what dreams may come in the sleep of death, and speaks of the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.
- scene 4 of Act III: Polonius dies behind the arras of the queen’s chamber, run through by Hamlet’s sword, which believed it was killing the king.
- scene 1 of Act V: In the graveyard, Hamlet thinks of the death that levels the powerful and the beggar before the skulls the gravedigger throws up, and is shaken to learn that one of them is Yorick’s.
- scene 2 of Act V: In the duel, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine, Laertes is wounded by his own blade, Hamlet kills Claudius, and, mortally wounded, dies after naming Fortinbras as successor.
Passages
The soliloquy that weighs dying as sleeping.
What in fact holds him back, and it is not the punishment of the suicide, is what may lie beyond sleep:
To die, to sleep. / To sleep, perchance to dream [...] ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause. There’s the respect / That makes calamity of so long life.(III.1)
Yorick’s skull.
Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.(V.1)
The readiness with which Hamlet looks at his own death.
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. [...] The readiness is all.(V.2)