essaysComic Relief in Hamlet
In Hamlet, the majority of the comic relief is dark and depressing. The main character is obsessed with death and makes morbid jokes about old age, deception, and corpses. This side of the character is shown so that the reader can understand how much this disturbs the prince. The result of this is a play with some very depressing scenes.
Hamlet's negative attitude gives way to many sadistic jests at the events surrounding him. He tells his friend Horatio that the food brought for the funeral was served at the wedding, also. This joke is sad because Hamlet is still grieving while he is forced to endure the pungent incestuous image of his mother sharing a bed with his uncle. This disturbing time for him leads to most of his depressing humor.
His family's blatant deception causes him to state sarcastically that if the world is honest, then the end of the world must be near. The reader can identify with Hamlet's feelings of bitterness and disillusionment because of his sarcastic reactions.
Fairly soon after, Polonius becomes the object of Hamlet's ridicule. The appearance of this aspect of humor is not surprising due to the cruel nature of the play. Polonius is an older man who forgets what he is saying in the middle of a sentence and absolutely cannot come to a point quickly. Hamlet calls him a "great baby," and Rosencrantz says that when men grow old, they mentally become children. After Polonius is killed, Hamlet refers to removing the body from room as "{lugging} the guts." Since the body has been stabbed, the reader
can assume that Hamlet is making light of the bloody, most likely disemboweled corpse. First Polonius is mocked because of his age; then Hamlet returns to him dark humor.
The most prevalent form of macabre humor is Hamlet's way of trivializing death. He makes many jokes about this . When he describes how a king could be digested by a beggar, one could envision Claudius cringing. Along with the image of death, Hamlet uses the word "progress," which indicates a royal journey. He taunts the king and death at the same time. Later during the graveyard scene, he asks Yorick's skull: "Quite chapfall'n?" He is asking if the skull is down in the mouth or depressed, which is a sick question to ask of a long dead cranium. This obsession with the dead originates with Hamlet's inability to accept his father's death and his own suicidal tendencies.
Due to the deception he is facing, Hamlet also make some cruel comments about the way that women change their appearances to attract men. He displays this in front of Ophelia. He is redirecting his disgust from his mother to her. When she tries to speak with him, he gives her a speech on the evils of woman. Her chief fault, according to Hamlet, is changing her appearance and actions. He describes how a woman will paint her face, behave ridiculously, and pretend to be simple-minded to explain her actions. During the graveyard scene, he reiterates his point by informing the skull: "let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come." No matter how talented a woman is at making herself beautiful, she
will eventually become as the putrid skull that Hamlet holds. The moldering flesh of deception finally rots away to reveal the truth.
Throughout the time that Hamlet is pretending to be mad, his jokes reveal what he is really feeling. They show the bitterness and sorrow that Hamlet is enduring, and they show that he is angry that his family is succeeding with their deceptions. He is hiding behind the illusion of madness and the screen of his jests. Hamlet is impassioned, and through his humor, the reader knows how dark life seems for him.
