Setting in Hamlet

Setting in Hamlet

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, setting plays a crucial role in signifying character’s underlying feelings throughout the play. Whether it be Hamlet conversing in a graveyard, or his constant confinement to his castle, where the characters of the play enact their lines is more than just arbitrary placement by the author.

Hamlet has spent the majority of his life confined to the walls of his castle. While the subjects of the kingdom may view his home as a luxury, it has severely contributed to his madness. With the death of his father, the castle has lost its order and purity, allowing for the events of the play to take place. It soon becomes a home for murder and betrayal. Because of its lack of order, Hamlet uses this as an excuse to let his true feelings come out. This eventually leads to the corruption of all of the characters in the play. Ophelia, Polonius’s daughter, finds herself in the middle of this mess and drowns herself in the river. After her death, Hamlet goes to the graveyard and speaks of the meaning of life. The ironies of expressing his views of life in a graveyard prove how setting is very significant in regard to connecting surroundings with speech.

That skull has a tongue in it, and could sing once.

Jawbone , that did the first murder! This might be the pate

Of a politician, which this ass now o’erreaches; one that

would circumvent God, might it not?

Why, e’en so, and now my Lady Worm’s, chopless,

And knock’d about the mazzard with a sexton’s spade.

Here’s fine revolution, an we had the trick to see’t. Did

these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at

loggats with them? Mine ache to think on’t.

In this scene of the play, Hamlet is presented with the finality of death and comes face to face with it in a physical form. As they dig the grave, they discuss the fairness of giving a Christian burial to Ophelia, the subject of a possible suicide. Hamlet and Horatio then enter, and Hamlet ponders about the life before the people became skulls and bones. Hamlet ask the gravediggers who they are digging the grave for, in which one responds that he is making his own grave, then that it is for no one, because it is for a dead person. Finally, he admits that it is for a woman who is already dead. He goes on to say that he has been a gravedigger for many years —since King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. Hamlet notices and picks up a skull that belonged to Yorick, who he knew as a child. It is here he realized that no matter how much power a man has in his lifetime, he will eventually end up becoming dust, like all men. The skull is a physical reminder to Hamlet that death is final. While the skull does spark somewhat of a dreary thought, it also reminds him of his happier childhood with his father. This final thought is, however, interrupted when he realizes that he is in a graveyard and Ophelia is now being buried.