HAMLET ACT 5: Questions

1) What do you feel is the point of the gravedigger’s riddles and song? How does it fit into the play?
The gravedigger is there to lighten the mood. He sings about love, and death and he foreshadows Hamlet's near future. His love will be lost and he will die.
2) In what ways do Hamlet’s reactions to the skulls in the graveyard seem to suggest a change in his outlook? Compare Hamlet’s attitude towards Yoric to Hamlet’s attitude to Ophelia or even his father? How is it different? How is it similar?
Hamlet has a change of heart here. When he hears about his mother, father, Claudius or Ophelia, he gets angry and yells like a child. However, when he holds Yoric's skull, he is calm. He may be accepting all that has happened to him in this play, and maybe he is coming out of his madness.
3) How old is Hamlet? How do you know this?
He is 30. We know this because the gravedigger has held his profession as long as Hamlet has lived.
4) What does the violent argument between Hamlet and Laertes add to the play?
They both fight over Ophelia and the thrown. They both want to be king, and they both want Ophelia to be true to them. It adds to the connection between Fortinbraz to Hamlet to Laertes as equally different.
5) What developments in Hamlet’s character are presented through the story of what happened on the boat? (V.ii 1-62). How has Hamlet changed?
He says to kill them right as they arrive, and not to let them say their last words to God so they may not be accepted to Heaven. This changes Hamlet, in that he starts to take action. He jumps on the pirate's ship, and possibly makes some sort of arrangement with them and Fortinbraz.


6) How do Hamlet’s motives in killing Claudius seem to have shifted according to his speech beginning “Does it not, think thee…” (V.ii.63)
Now Hamlet is saying he wants to be King, and Claudius has taken that from him. Hamlet is really the better King for Denmark.
7) What concerns of the play are reinforced in the Osric episode? (V.ii.80-170)
He tells Hamlet that Claudius wants him and Laertes to fight, but he presents it with huge words, just to sound smart. Like Polonius, he fakes his smartness, and also reinforces prostitution here. Hamlet is in line to the thrown, and he is sucking up to him.
8) Why does Hamlet ‘defy augury’? (V.ii.192)
HE knows he might die, but he also knows that he must face his fate. He is not afraid to die, he will go out like a man, laughing at death.
9) What does Laertes say is his motive in still resenting Hamlet? How has already lost this? How does this contribute to the presentation of revenge in the play? (V.ii216-223)
He is saying, well yes I understand what you were trying to do, and maybe my reasons for killing you was stupid, we should be friends. But he still wants to kill him because he still wants his honor protected. He still wants the crown.
10) How might the dying lines of Gertrude, Claudius and Laertes be viewed as typical of the way their characters have been presented throughout the play?
The queen drinks the poison. She gets her last words off to Hamlet, she really loved him. The King drinks the poison too. He is asking for help, as he has the entire play. Asking people to do things for him. Laertes dies nobly, noting that he was just trying to do the same thing Hamlet was trying to do. He asks for Hamlet's forgiveness.
11) Who “wins” in Hamlet? How and why do you think this?
Fortinbras wins! In the beginning of the play he was set up to take over the thrown, and in the end he did. Hamlet did set it up for him and kind of gave up because he had no other choice to, but it was in Fortinbras' favor.