A Bit Of Humour

Death is always a matter of debate. Its psychologically impossible, I think, to accept the fact that one day we are leaving earth and never come back, or that one day someone we know, or love, is leaving us forever. The only thing that stays is the memory. There are books about deaths, movies, songs. It is like love, unexplainable but inevitable. Act V of Hamlet is mainly about death. All characters die. Ironically. It even starts with two gravediggers debating about the death of Ophelia and the role and importance of a gravedigger. I really liked that scene, it is meant to be funny and it actually is, but in between the jokes and gossip of these two gravediggers there is truth.

“Will you ha' the truth on ’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' Christian burial.” (Act V, scene 1, line 21-23) The social class was an issue then. The difference before God because of how much money one has. A “gentlewomen” is one with money and status, part of the noble people. The ones that live in a castle. If she was a common women she would not have received a Christian burial because suicide is something to be ashamed of, it is a disrespect of live, a sin for God. Here the issue of suicidal comes up again. Hamlet had before stated it in the soliloquy “to be or not to be” and he knows that it is not honorable to die committing suicide, no matter how eager he was to take his own life because of misery. But since she is a “gentlewomen” the gravediggers know that she will have a Christian burial anyhow.

Some of Hamlet’s lines reminded me of the Jorge Luis Borge’s sonnet El Olvido Que Seremos “Ya somos el olvido que seremos. El polvo elemental que nos ignora” starts like that. “we are already the forgotten we will be. The elemental dust that ignores us.” He basically states that there is no way to escape being forgotten or die and become dust. Hamlet surprises with this fact when he holds Yorick’s skull. That even Alexander The Great, after all his conquers and achievements, he becomes a dirty rotten stinky skeleton. That no matter how much make up a women wears, a skull underground is her destiny. I agree with Hamlet but I do not want to see life that way. If I do I will end up locked up in my room crying my eyes out and asking myself “to be or not to be?” day and night until I jump off the window. I prefer the gravedigger’s humor and simple way of living. “I like thy wit well, in good faith” (Act V, scene 1, line 45)