The Theme Of Death In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet Essay In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the theme of death is pervasive. The specter of death is represented in the opening scene of the play when Hamlet sees the ghost of his dead father, and the play ends with a bloody scene of death and carnage. However, apart from these obvious representations of physical death, as nearly every significant character in the play dies, the theme of death on a more spiritual level is played out most dramatically in Hamlet’s own mind in his famous soliloquy “To be or not To be”. In this soliloquy, Hamlet seriously contemplates suicide and meditates on the more spiritual aspects of death, suicide and the afterlife. But what prompts Hamlet to pose the existential question of “To be or not To be” to …show more content…
The skull, representing the ultimate physical manifestation of death, once again evokes in Hamlet existential thoughts about life and death. Confronted with death in the form of Yorick’s skull at the end of the play, Hamlet thinks about how what could have once been the vibrant head of a politician or singer, is now reduced through decay to an empty skull: “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once” (Act 5, scene 1, lines: 77-78). What one does in life, even those as powerful as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great (Hamlet references these kings), seems completely futile in the end. Hamlet also realizes that death is the ultimate equalizer of men: “Your fat king and your lean beggar is but/ variable service, two dishes, but to one table / That 's the end” (Act IV, scene 3, lines: 26-28). In death we are all common and equal, as both Alexander the Great and the court jester Yorick ‘returneth into dust’ in the same way. Hamlet is also intrigued by the natural cycle of life and death, noting that dead corpses will disintegrate into soil, and it is with this soil humans plant their crops, and so forth: “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a/ king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.” In this scene Hamlet seems to accept the inevitability of death as part of the natural cycle of life and perhaps it is no longer as frightening as he once thought. At this juncture in the play, Hamlet seems to better understand, on a philosophical level, the implications of death in this world and thus is more prepared to face the fate of death whenever it might come: “it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” (Act V, scene 2, lines: 235-237). Hamlet is “ready” to accept the inevitability of his own