922 shakespeare, William
after her father’s murder at Hamlet’s hand. The
court receives word from Hamlet that his ship had
been attacked by pirates, and that he managed to
escape and is making his way back home. Later, in
act 5, we will discover, as Hamlet tells his friend
Horatio, that he uncovered Claudius’s plot to have
him killed at the hands of his friends, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern.
Claudius’s plan to have Hamlet killed gone
awry, he now contrives with Laertes to set up a
fencing match at which Hamlet will be murdered
with a poisoned sword. In case that does not work,
for added insurance, Claudius will bring a cup of
poisoned wine. In the final scene, while Hamlet is
fighting Laertes, Gertrude innocently drinks from
the poisoned cup and dies. Hamlet is pierced by
Laertes’ poisoned sword, but then Laertes is also
wounded with his own blade. Laertes forgives
Hamlet for everything he has done and then dies.
Hamlet finally kills Claudius, and then he himself
dies. Fortinbras enters the bloody hall, and Horatio
tells him what has transpired. Hamlet is honorably
borne off for burial, and order and justice prevail.
Ellen Rosenberg
deatH in Hamlet
In Hamlet, the theme of death goes hand-in-glove
with the play’s objective of bringing retribution to
those who do evil. At play’s end, justice is delivered
through death, and the characters who have been
wronged, the audience, and society itself are morally
satisfied. The human condition, however—that is,
the idea that all who live must eventually yield to
death—encompasses larger questions than those
posed by the quest for vengeance.
Consider the variety of and means by which
deaths occur in the play. King Hamlet has slain King
Fortinbras in military battle before the play opens.
Claudius becomes king by killing King Hamlet,
his brother. Originally thought to have died from a
“serpent’s sting,” the ghost of King Hamlet informs
us that he has been killed by poison having been
poured into his ear. The play within the play is an
entertainment on the subject of murder and is also
an exemplar of art’s primary purpose: to hold a mir-
ror up to life. In doing so, “The Murder of Gonzago”
reflects Claudius’s murder of King Hamlet.
In a case of mistaken identity, Hamlet kills the
unarmed, elderly, eavesdropping Polonius by stab-
bing him with a dagger through a drape. Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern have been sent to England
with Hamlet with sealed orders in which Claudius
asks that Hamlet be executed on the spot. Hamlet,
in an act of self-defense, rewrites the orders, sealing
the fate of his friends.
The gravedigger who has been at his job since
the day Hamlet was born unearths a variety of
human bones, but it is Yorick’s skull that affects
Hamlet. He knew the jester, who presumably died
of old age in life.
Finally, of course there is the gruesome fencing-
match death scene. Gertrude is killed by the poison
wine that Claudius intended for Hamlet. Laertes
avenges his father’s death by cutting Hamlet with a
poisoned sword. Hamlet has switched swords with
Laertes in a scuffle, and he cuts Laertes with his own
sword. If we are looking for a moral, we may say that
Laertes, who has made his peace with Hamlet in the
end, is bound to be punished nevertheless for con-
niving with the evil Claudius. Claudius is the play’s
third king to die (if we start counting in the history
of the play), but because Claudius is so heinous a
villain, Shakespeare has Hamlet kill him twice: once
by Laertes’ sword and once by drinking the dregs of
the poisoned cup. Hamlet himself dies twice and by
the same means. After all, he has been responsible
for a number of deaths that went beyond his revenge
motive. The Norwegian army, acting in honor to
avenge the slain King Fortinbras, is rendered unnec-
essary as Horatio conveys to the young Fortinbras
Hamlet’s last words, giving him the Danish throne.
In addition to the growing heap of corpses
Shakespeare provides, the audience is also invited to
examine some of the rituals and beliefs that pertain
to the dead. We learn, for example, that Hamlet is
wearing black clothing because he is in mourning.
Since she has remarried, Gertrude objects to Ham-
let’s funereal garb and tells her son, “Good Hamlet,
cast off thy nighted garb . . . / Do not for ever with
thy vailed lids / Seek for thy father in the dust. / . . .
all that lives must die / Passing through nature to
eternity” (1.2.68–73).
The presence of a ghost suggests a belief in the
afterlife as well as a belief in a system of judgment