The penultimate scene of the play begins with the two clowns digging a grave for the late Ophelia. They debate whether she should be allowed to have a Christian burial, because she committed suicide.
The skull of Yorick was there in the graveyard for twenty-three years. The gravedigger knew him and his skull well, and refers to him as “a whoreson mad fellow”. However, Hamlet takes the skull from the gravedigger and starts to contemplate on different issues.
In the churchyard, two gravediggers shovel out a grave for Ophelia. They argue whether Ophelia should be buried in the churchyard since her death looks like a suicide. According to religious doctrine, suicides may not receive Christian burial.
As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died. At the same moment, Laertes becomes infuriated with the priest, who says that to give Ophelia a proper Christian burial would profane the dead. Laertes leaps into Ophelia's grave to hold her once again in his arms.
The First Gravedigger argues that the dead woman deserves no such indulgence, because she drowned herself and is not worthy of salvation.
Ophelia's drowning is the consummate representation of an eternal retreat into the feminine, trading an individual voice for eternal silence in union with feminine essence. In turn, her death expresses the danger of reducing an individual to his or her gender and disregarding the voice of the marginalized.
The officiating priest is more emphatic (epigraph) in his objections and denies Ophelia full religious burial rites. Maiden flowers can be scattered on her grave and church bells rung, but no other church-sanctioned activities may be performed. For Hamlet and Laertes, her brother, these are “maimed” (incomplete) rites.
Their particular form of madness was more related to hysteria -- an affliction which was considered to be particularly feminine. Clinically speaking, Ophelia's behavior and appearance are characteristic of the malady the Elizabethans would have diagnosed as female love-melancholy, or erotomania.
Why does Hamlet jump into Ophelia's grave? Because he wants to show his sorrow is as great as Laertes. What does the king say to Laertes to console (make him feel better) him after Laertes and Hamlet are separated? He tells him not to worry; he will soon have the appropriate time in place to kill Hamlet.
For the Elizabethans, Hamlet was the prototype of melancholy male madness, associated with intellectual and imaginative genius; but Ophelia's affliction was erotomania, or love-madness.
Ophelia's final words are addressed to either Hamlet, or her father, or even herself and her lost innocence: “And will a not come again? / No, no, he is dead, / Go to thy death-bed, / He never will come again. / … / God a mercy on his soul. And of all Christian souls. God buy you.” Next, she drowns herself.
Ophelia is allowed a Christian burial, but her rites are "maimèd." Much to the objection of Laertes, the ceremony has been shortened.
While she lives in the same patriarchal society that demands that she subjugate herself to her father and her brother until she is married, Ophelia has fallen in love with Prince Hamlet. There is strong evidence that she has even had sexual relations with him.
Yorick is a masculine name of Scandinavian origin with roots that span as far and wide as England and Ancient Greece.
For Hamlet, Yorick's skull symbolizes the inevitable decay of the human body. Speaking to and about Yorick's skull, Hamlet notes that Yorick's lips no longer exist, which leads him to note that Yorick's jokes, pranks, and songs are gone, too.
Both the comic and the show go out of their way to have Yorick mention that before he purchased Ampersand, he was a therapy monkey. Before that though, he was a lab rat.
How is Ophelia's death foreshadowed? Ophelia's death is foreshadowed in Act 2, Scene 1 of Hamlet. She is talking to her father about Hamlet's madness. Her madness, which leads to her death, is predicted in this scene.
Hamlet asks whose grave they are digging. One of the gravediggers, who does not realize that it is Hamlet he is speaking to, answers him in riddles and paradoxes, but eventually admits that it ''was a woman, but, rest her soul, she is dead.
Ophelia is a character in Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. She is driven mad when her father, Polonius, is murdered by her lover, Hamlet. She dies while still very young, suffering from grief and madness.
Hamlet uses Ophelia for his own personal gain, he toys with her emotions by making to seem as though she is the cause of his madness. Hamlet emotionally abuses Ophelia with no regard for her psychological well-being.
Naomi Watts plays Gertrude and Mechtild, and the two characters are sisters. Mechtild was considered a witch because she had a miscarriage. The death of her baby was thought to be the work of the devil, and so she was to be burned at the stake. Interestingly, the child was Claudius'.
Hamlet will never see Ophelia again. In the play, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Hamlet was at Ophelia's grave and he jumped in because he really loved and felt bad for the way he rejected her. Ophelia died by drowning herself. Hamlet made a big list of all the things he would do to love Ophelia.
At Ophelia's burial, the Priest reveals a widely held belief that Ophelia committed suicide, angering Laertes. Hamlet fights Laertes over Ophelia's grave, angered by Laertes' exaggerated emphasis of his sorrow and because he believes he loved Ophelia much more than her brother, Laertes.
In the play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius and the love interest of Hamlet, is depicted as a young and beautiful woman who is innocent, virtuous, and loyal. Ophelia is the innocent victim in Hamlet and the specific attributes that she has lead to her tragic death.
Why is Hamlet so cruel to Ophelia? Hamlet is cruel to Ophelia because he has transferred his anger at Gertrude's marriage to Claudius onto Ophelia. In fact, Hamlet's words suggest that he transfers his rage and disgust for his mother onto all women.