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He talks about the vile and incestuous wedding that has occurred, about suicide and about the rankness and corruption within Denmark and the world, describing the world as an unweeded garden. However, the juxtapositions give his speech greater meaning. He compares his late father (King Hamlet) to his once uncle now (step) father (Claudius), as Hyperion to a satyr (I.ii.142). Hyperion was the Greek titan who was the father of the sun, dawn, and moon. He had virtues of honour, integrity, and nobility. However, Satyrs is a Latin monster or beast, which had a human torso, head, and arms but the horns, tail, and legs of a goat. They had negative qualities that were bestial and included lasciviousness, overindulgence, and lust. Therefore, in Hamlet's eyes he viewed his father as having possessed King-like qualities, and Claudius as a beast who married his mother for lust and power, while showing a great dislike to the behaviours that Claudius participated in such as drinking. As he further goes on about the Gertrude's and Claudius' relationship, he goes on to
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Examples of this can be found in the Gravedigger Scene in V.i.
The scene opens with two gravediggers (clowns) in a graveyard engaging in comical banter.
Some people say that incongruity is the basis of comedy and this is proved true in this scene. As the gravediggers or clowns, as they are described as in the stage directions, although they are described as rustic and lowly they discuss the matter of Ophelias death in deep profound, theological sense. They talks about Christian doctrines and arrange their arguments with the rules of Aristotelian logic. Moreover, when the first gravedigger and Hamlet banter about whose grave it is that they the gravediggers are digging. Even Hamlet comments to Horatio about the gravediggers speech saying,
"We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us...
The age has grown so picked that the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (V.i. 141- 145)
Stating how he and Horatio needs to speak precisely to the gravedigger or he will get the better of he and Horatio. This contrasting theme of the gravediggers lowly status and their sardonic wit allowing them to better their social superiors, would have appealed to the groundlings or commoners who came to watch the
Examples of this can be found in the Gravedigger Scene in V.i.
The scene opens with two gravediggers (clowns) in a graveyard engaging in comical banter.
Some people say that incongruity is the basis of comedy and this is proved true in this scene. As the gravediggers or clowns, as they are described as in the stage directions, although they are described as rustic and lowly they discuss the matter of Ophelias death in deep profound, theological sense. They talks about Christian doctrines and arrange their arguments with the rules of Aristotelian logic. Moreover, when the first gravedigger and Hamlet banter about whose grave it is that they the gravediggers are digging. Even Hamlet comments to Horatio about the gravediggers speech saying,
"We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us...
The age has grown so picked that the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe" (V.i. 141- 145)
Stating how he and Horatio needs to speak precisely to the gravedigger or he will get the better of he and Horatio. This contrasting theme of the gravediggers lowly status and their sardonic wit allowing them to better their social superiors, would have appealed to the groundlings or commoners who came to watch the