Hamlet: Act V
Episode 57
In this episode, Professor Pipes returns to tell who lives, who dies, who tells Hamlet's story. Shakespeare's classic, Hamlet, finally concludes when Laertes laments his revenge, Hamlet has his revenge, Claudius catches his comeuppance, Gertrude gulps a poisoned glass, and Fortinbras just can’t wait to be king. So much to get through in just two scenes!
TRIGGER WARNING: Death, Murder, Mentions of Suicide
Transcript
Introduction:
Hello and welcome to Piper’s Paraphrases. I’m Professor Pipes, and today I’m talking about Hamlet. Really, that’s the whole thing. Now that we’ve reached Act 5, you’re probably asking yourself: will everything turn out alright in the end? Of course not – it’s a tragedy! So let’s find out just how terribly wrong it goes.
Previously:
Previously in Hamlet, Prince Hamlet was planning to avenge his father’s death by killing the murderer, who just so happens to be his uncle and new step-dad, Claudius. However, so far he’d only managed to kill the king’s advisor, Polonius, which had a few terrible repercussions. First, Claudius decided to ship Hamlet off to England, where he secretly planned to have him killed, but luckily Hamlet got away and made it back to Denmark. Second, it made Polonius’ son, Laertes, decide that he, too, wanted revenge, so he and Claudius planned Hamlet’s murder. Laertes is going to challenge Hamlet to a fencing match, but he’ll keep his sword sharpened and dipped in poison, and if that doesn’t work, there will also be a cup of poison. Finally, Hamlet’s betrayal and the death of her father led Hamlet’s girlfriend, Ophelia, to experience a mental break, ultimately leading to her death. We have 2 scenes and 6 more deaths coming up, so we’d better get started!
Plot Summary:
Scene 1: Our final act begins with some comedy in a graveyard. Wait, comedy? Yep, that’s right. Two comic gravediggers are talking about whether the future occupant of the grave they’re digging should be given a Christian burial. On the one hand, it seems like her death was self-inflicted, since she can’t claim self-defense against water. On the other hand, she’s a noblewoman. The two have some serious gallows humor – literally making jokes about gallows. As one grave digger leaves, Hamlet and Horatio enter. As the remaining grave digger starts tossing up skulls – as one does – Hamlet wonders about the people to whom the skulls once belonged. Hamlet goes to talk to him, and has apparently met his pun-equal, who tells him he’s been digging graves since King Hamlet killed King Fortinbras, which was the same day that Prince Hamlet was born. Hmm… apparently it took Prince Fortinbras decades to think about revenge, and here I was thinking Prince Hamlet was slow about it. The grave digger mentions that young Hamlet went mad and was sent to England, where it doesn’t matter, because everyone’s crazy over there! Ha! Burn on you, England! Eventually the gravedigger points out the skull of Yorick, the king’s old jester, and Hamlet holds it – yes, this is the speech where he holds the skull – remembering Yorick from his childhood and reflecting upon how everyone returns to the earth in the end. Man, he should be a motivational speaker. Soon the royals arrive with Laertes, a priest, and other funeral-goers, so Hamlet and Horatio hide themselves and listen in. Laertes argues with the priest that more ceremony should be given to the dead woman’s funeral, but the priest says her death was questionable, and that people who die by their own hand aren’t allowed to have full, Christian funerals. Finally, Hamlet realizes that the grave, and funeral, are for Ophelia! After Gertrude laments that she’d wished Ophelia could have married Hamlet, Laertes jumps in the grave to hug her one last time and says they should just bury him with her. Hamlet is all like, no I loved her most and jumps in the grave, too, and he and Laertes start fighting. Uh, guys, this is not the time or the place! Eventually, they’re yanked apart and Hamlet declares that he loved Ophelia more than forty-thousand brothers could! Well ya had a funny way of showing it, didn’t ya. Gertrude says he’s talking madness, and Hamlet storms off, followed by Horatio. Claudius secretly reminds Laertes about their secret plan, assuring him that he’ll have his revenge!
Scene 2: And this is it, folks, the final scene, final duel, and final deaths! Hamlet is in the midst of telling Horatio about being on the ship to England. One night, he couldn’t sleep, so he snuck into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s room, where he found a letter from Claudius asking the King of England to execute him. He hands Horatio the letter as proof and explains that he then forged a letter to the English king from “Claudius” requesting the execution… of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern! Looks like he’s overtaken the pair for Worst Friend ever! And he doesn’t feel guilty at all, blaming their upcoming deaths on their own meddling. Well… Just then, Orsic, a fancy pants courtier enters. Hamlet tells Horatio how rich but awful this guy is, which is proven when, like Polonius, he just agrees with whatever Hamlet tells him. He lets Hamlet know that Laertes is ready to face him in a swordfight, and Hamlet agrees. Horatio warns him that Laertes is a great swordsman, and Hamlet says he has a bad feeling, but he still decides to fight. Trust your instincts, people! During their pre-fight handshake, Hamlet apologizes to Laertes, but blames the murder on his madness. Hmm… I thought you said you were faking that. And they’re off! First we have a lunge, oh but it’s quickly parried. Darting around, and coming back with the riposte! Another lunge – no wait, it’s a feint. And there it is! Hamlet lands a hit! The scoreboard lights up, and the crowd goes wild! A little much? Anyways, Claudius makes a big show of adding a “pearl” in Hamlet’s honor to his cup, but Hamlet says he’ll drink after their next round. During the fight, Gertrude grabs the cup. Claudius tells her not to drink it – subtle, dude – but she does! Uh oh. Eventually Laertes cuts Hamlet with his poisoned blade, but in a classic show of irony, the fighters end up with each other’s swords, and Hamlet cuts Laertes with the poisoned blade, too. Just then, Gertrude collapses and dies – but not before helpfully letting Hamlet know the drink was poisoned. Death counter, do your work! And get ready for some rapid fire deaths! Laertes suddenly regrets his revenge – maybe because he was poisoned by his own sword – and tells Hamlet his whole evil plan with Claudius, so Hamlet finally stabs his uncle-dad and then also forces the poisoned drink down his throat. Took you five acts to kill him, so you might as well do it twice. Then Laertes forgives Hamlet and they both die – no wait, Hamlet’s still alive. He asks Horatio to tell his story and then dies – nope, believe it or not, he’s still hanging in there. Osric runs in to announce that Fortinbras has arrived, and Hamlet says he hopes Fortinbras will be the new king of Denmark, and then he dies. For real this time. Fortinbras enters and is like, dude, what happened here. Oh, and an ambassador announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Meh. Horatio says he’ll explain everything that happened, but first Fortinbras announces that he intends to become the new king and calls for Hamlet to be given a fancy military funeral. And with that, the end!
Characterization:
Now that we’ve come to the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, we of course have a lot fewer characters than we did before… but let’s talk about a couple of them anyway!
Claudius, the villain throughout the play, gets the punishment that he deserves: death. And though he’s not the only one to die, his murder is the most, well, murdery, since he’s essentially killed three times: stabbed with the sword, poisoned with the sword, and poisoned with the wine. A fitting end for a character who murdered his brother, seduced his brother’s wife, and then watched as his wife drank the poison he intended for his nephew, knowing she would die. Claudius really hasn’t changed a lot from beginning to end, has he?
Hamlet, however, certainly has. He’s the most complex and dynamic character by far. At the start of the play, Hamlet is sad, thoughtful, and angry – ok, some things never change – but he is also disgusted by the duplicity of those around him, highly concerned with the morality of his every action, and characterized by words rather than action. Now, all of those seem to have changed by the final scenes. His own two-sided nature is evident when he declares his extreme love for Ophelia after viciously insulting and rejecting her and also when he secretly switches the letter that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have, leading to their deaths. And speaking of that murder, he doesn’t feel remotely worried about whether it was the right thing to do, telling Horatio that their meddling was their downfall. However, he still doesn’t physically get involved in their murder, taking a passive role in their deaths. But all that changes, too. Instead of thinking about all the possibilities and weighing every option, Hamlet has resolved that what will happen will happen, telling Horatio that, despite having a bad feeling about what is to come, “it is no matter” and just some foolish worries that “would perhaps trouble a woman.” *EYE ROLL.* But he doesn’t really just let things happen, finally taking action and triple murdering Claudius.
Interestingly, Hamlet’s internal conflicts are made external through the character of Laertes. Laertes and Hamlet are both facing the same conflict – the murder of their fathers. In fact, Hamlet states that “by the image of my cause I see / The portraiture of his,” noting their similarities. However, they also deal with this conflict in vastly different ways. As they take their fencing foils, Hamlet puns on this, saying “I’ll be your foil, Laertes.” A foil in literature is a character who contrasts with another character so that their differences will better demonstrate the qualities of them both. And they don’t just differ in fencing ability. While Hamlet treats Ophelia… poorly… Laertes jumps into her grave in a demonstration of his love and grief. The two of them fight in her grave, almost as if Hamlet is fighting his own guilty conscience for his treatment of her. Another key difference is Laertes’ choice to immediately storm home and seek revenge for his father’s death, which he does in yet another fight with Hamlet. In this case, it’s like Hamlet is fighting his own internal conflict between words (Hamlet) and action (Laertes).
Analysis:
The difference between Appearance and Reality and the duplicitous nature of Performance have been key themes throughout the play, and the same is true in this act. For instance, Osric is the epitome of what Hamlet hates in Claudius’ court: all appearances. Hamlet messes with him in much the same way that he did with Polonius back in Act 3 when discussing clouds. This time he talks about the temperature and Osric agrees with whatever he says, taking his hat off and putting it back on comically, but behind the comedy is Hamlet’s disgust with this performative behavior. He says that too many people have “got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter,” meaning that they know how to act, but there’s really nothing behind these performances, nothing true in their character. Interestingly, Hamlet also tricks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with their belief in appearances. They still think they’re holding a letter from Claudius, but instead they carry a letter from Hamlet that seals their fate. Hamlet even discusses this action by saying that, “Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, / They had begun the play,” punning on the word play, and meaning that he took action before he could even think about it.
Speaking of this murderous choice, let’s talk about the Complexity of Morality. Hamlet despises the sins of others, but fails to recognize those sins in himself. He faults Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for being false friends and deceiving him, but then he deceives them right back, swapping out their letter for his. And when Horatio seems shocked, Hamlet says “They are not near my conscience. Their defeat / Does by their own insinuation grow,” blaming them for their own downfall. Even though Hamlet hated that Claudius killed his father without giving him the opportunity to atone for his sins, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will also not have “shriving time,” or an opportunity to ask for forgiveness, condemning them to purgatory. Of course, Hamlet faults Claudius for murder, but at the end of the day, well, end of the play, Hamlet causes far more destruction. He directly kills Polonius, Laertes, and Claudius. He orders the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And he indirectly leads to the deaths of Ophelia and Gertrude. So everyone who actually died during the play has Hamlet to blame. Interestingly, both Laertes and Hamlet die because of their own sins. Hamlet dies because he killed Polonius, leading Laertes to seek revenge. But Laertes realizes that he is responsible for his own death, since he chose to deceive Hamlet, saying, “the foul practice/ Hath turned itself on me.” But even though Claudius, Laertes, and Hamlet commit atrocities to achieve their goals, Hamlet sees his actions as noble. In fact, all three sons – Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras – have managed to uphold their family honor by seeing their fathers’ murderers killed, while maintaining a sense of morality. And while Claudius died in the midst of sin, so that “his soul may be as damned and black / As hell, whereto it goes,” Laertes and Hamlet forgive each other, thus giving them the opportunity to go to heaven.
And despite where we might end up after death, this play demonstrates that Death is the great Equalizer. Back in Act 4, when discussing the death of Polonius, Hamlet points out that we will all become a meal to worms, saying, “Your fat / king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two / dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.” And in Act 5, even though the gravediggers talk about where Ophelia is going to be buried, their gallows humor points out how pointless such distinctions may be, since death is death, and gallows outlive a thousand tenants. This idea is made even more evident, when Hamlet holds up an actual skull, the skull of his childhood jester, and points out that even Alexander the Great looked just like Yorrick when dead. He continues, saying “To what base uses we may return,” since a once great man has turned to dust and clay that we might use to plug a hole. Ultimately “that earth, which kept the world in awe, / Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!” And so too will we all. On a much funnier note, even the gravediggers show the equality of man through their humor, which matches well with Hamlet’s wit! After a bit of wordplay, Hamlet tells Horatio that “The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls his kibe” meaning that the language of the commoners is such that you can hardly tell them from the nobles.
Finally, throughout the play, Hamlet has struggled with Words vs Action, and both take on an important role in this final act. Hamlet has had a tendency to use words as his weapons, screaming at Ophelia, tricking Polonius and Osric, and even comparing levels of grief with Laertes. However, he also feels trapped by this intellectualism, stuck in decision paralysis. Relatable. But in this act, he finally took the Beatles lyrics to heart and went from *SING* speaking words of wisdom, to “Let be,” deciding that what will happen, will happen, and boy does he make some deaths happen. But once the action is done, it turns out that the significance of words is still not lost on Hamlet. In fact, in his final moments, he repeatedly asks Horatio to stay in the harsh world long enough to “Tell my story.” His final line continues this thought, as Hamlet says that Fortinbras, “has my dying voice. / So tell him, with th’occurrents, more and less, / Which have solicited. The rest is silence.” So ultimately, it really isn’t Words VS Action, but a combination, a balance of these. Hamlet may have taken action to destroy an evil monarch, but without someone to live on and explain what happened and why, he will have died for nothing. And isn’t that kind of the point of a play, after all? The excitement may come from the battles and the sword fights, the action, but that’s not what makes it endure. Shakespeare certainly can weave an exciting plot, but the intent behind the action – the universal feelings of betrayal and grief and jealousy and ambition and love – the words – are what make his plays timeless.
Food for Thought:
Before we leave Denmark, I’ll leave you with some food for thought. As you reflect on the play as a whole, consider these questions:
First, generally, the main character in a tragedy has a tragic flaw that leads to their downfall, and often to their death. What is Hamlet’s tragic flaw?
Second, what is the relationship between revenge and honor in this play? How do the characters see this relationship, and what might Shakespeare be suggesting?
Third, consider Hamlet’s mental state. Now that we’ve finished the play, to what extent is his “madness” real, and to what extent is it a performance?
Fourth, much of Hamlet focuses on the inevitability of death and the emotional and moral struggles of life. What does this play suggest about the human condition and the meaning or purpose of life?
Fifth, how does Shakespeare use the character of Fortinbras to contrast with Hamlet? What is the significance of Fortinbras taking control of Denmark at the end of the play?
Finally, Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, died a few years before Hamlet was written. What does this play suggest about grief and relationships between father and son? And how does knowing about an author’s life impact how we read literature?
Thanks for watching this episode of Piper’s Paraphrases. Now go forth, read a bunch, and be good people.
