How Does Shakespeare Use Humor In Hamlet

The gravediggers, following this philosophy, show Hamlet little respect when he asks who they are burying. Upon hearing the tongue-in-cheek response from the gravedigger, Hamlet is

The point of the gravedigger’s riddles and songs is to take the audience away from the tension and darkness caused by certain events, like the deaths of Ophelia and Polonius and bring some comic relief. I believe Shakespeare includes the gravedigger's riddles and songs to calm the readers a bit before heading to the tragic and dramatic ending. The gravedigger sings, “In youth when I did love, did love, / Methought it was very sweet / To contract–o–the time, for–a–my behove, / Oh, methought, there–a–was nothing–a–meet. Has

Of course, no Shakespeare play would be complete without the use of puns. Shakespeare uses this type of humor as a witty way to keep the dialogue fresh and flowing. The reader gets a taste of these funny little bits as early as the first act and first scene, when Brakenbury starts, “With this, my lord, myself have naught to

Wordplay plays a major role in Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hamlet himself is very witty the whole time he’s in the play. His wordplay is rarely ever caught by the person he is speaking to and many of the readers. Hamlet’s puns also cause his foes to become confused and wonder if he could possible be insane. The reason Hamlet uses wordplay is to protect himself from his foes and to as a subtle weapon against a foe.

Polonius seemly hear all these vulgar and misogynistic rants and becomes ever more convinced that Hamlet is mad. He never rests easily until he ends up behind yet another arras, scheming, yet this time in Gertrude’s room and gets himself killed. The act of betrayal, by both Polonius and Gertrude has far-reaching consequences; Polonius is killed by Hamlet, Ophelia becomes mad and Laertes demands vengeance. Polonius’s betrayal disgusts Hamlet and he can only but refer to him as ‘a foolish prating knave’ and his mistreatment of his body when he says he will ‘lug his guts in the neighbour room’ can equally be taken as his disgust towards him.

The most noticeable demonstration of Hamlet's intelligence shows in his fondness for puns. Breaking out of commonly accepted speech patterns and delving into deeper meanings takes a lot of mental effort. Hamlet does this every time he talks with someone who would hinder him in realizing his objectives. Let us look at a particularly poignant example. Observe:

How does the use of comic relief best contrast the tragedy of Hamlet? In great works of literature a comic relief is used as contrast to a serious scene to intensify the overall tragic nature of the play or to relieve tension. As illustrated in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, intense scenes are joined with character’s banter and vacuous actions as to add a comic relief. In Hamlet, Polonius acts as a comic relief by his dull and windy personality, Hamlet uses his intelligence and his negativity toward the king and queen to create humor, while on the other hand Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are a comic relief by their senseless actions and naïve natures. Polonius, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are all used as a comic relief to

William Shakespeare once said that “brevity is the soul of wit.” This is heavily evident in regards to Hamlet and all of his short, witty comments throughout the play. In Act I Scene II Hamlet 's wit comes out in full force during a discussion with his mother, Gertrude, and his uncle/stepfather, Claudius, with Hamlet’s very first words in the play:

William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet relays Hamlet’s quest to avenge the murder of his father, the king of Denmark. The late King Hamlet was murdered by his brother, Claudius, who took the throne and Hamlet’s mother Gertrude for himself. Hamlet is beseeched by the ghost of his father to take vengeance upon Claudius; while he swears to do so, the prince inexplicably delays killing Claudius for months on end. Hamlet’s feeble attempt to first confirm his uncle’s guilt with a play that recounts the murder and his botched excuses for not killing Claudius when the opportunity arises serve as testimony to Hamlet’s true self. Hamlet is riddled with doubt towards the validity of the ghost and his own ability to carry out the act necessary to

If you were an uneducated person watching a play that you didn’t understand for hours, you would very easily become uninterested and bored very quickly. To make sure that didn’t happen Shakespeare put those humorous scenes in his play to catch the attention of those audience members. Humor is also used to heighten the sense of the major theme in the play. Death is the major theme in hamlet, with main characters dying at every turn. One of the funniest scenes in the drama is the gravedigger scene where they’re making fun of death. He had different types of comedy in this drama to fit the different type of people in his audience. It was already mentioned that his audiences contained anywhere from royalty to the highly educated to the uneducated peasants. So his jokes needed to vary, he had these super sophisticated jokes that you only understood if you were educated enough. He also would throw in sex jokes and double entendres for his lower class audience members. Example of these comedic scenes takes place all over the play. Act 2 scene 2 is where we see our first example of outright comedy, Polonius approaches hamlet and asks him if he recognizes him, and hamlet replies “Excellent well sir. You are a

Hey guess what!!! Your father King Hamlet is dead!!! Amazing right, I know, so not I'm going to attempt to steal his life, that does include marrying his wife. Your mom, so from now on don’t call me uncle just call me dad!!!! Whoa whoa whoa that was wild I know “but that what does that have to do with anything?” you may be asking yourself. Well Hamlet is struggling to deal with the realization that his world has just been turned upside down!! “Well has is he dealing with it?” you may be asking yourself. Well buckle up because we are going to take a closer look at Hamlet's relationship with the Ghost (Hamlet’s father), King Claudius(Hamlet's Uncle), and Queen Gertrude (Hamlet’s mom).

Towards the end of the play, there are two scenes in the graveyard. One is when Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him that the skull belonged to Yorick, the old king's jester. Hamlet tells Horatio that he knew Yorick, and then realizes what we all become after we die, dust. He then plays with the idea of life and death, and describes the finality of it. The gravedigger scene is the tragic conclusion of the play. The second scene of comedy in this scene is when the gravediggers argue whether Ophelia should be allowed to be

In the book Hamlet by Shakespeare, irony is used numerous times in order to give the reader insight on what is going on. As stated in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, irony is an action that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play. If this strategy were not included in this drama, it would take away the whole purpose. This play would consist of no suspense and would be extremely boring to the reader because the characters would know as much as the readers know. This allows for incite to what can happen in the future or what has happened in the past. The irony in this play ultimately revolves around Hamlet and his plan to achieve revenge with Claudius. From the play that Hamlet organizes

This light-hearted scene, depicting a rather normal family, is placed directly before Hamlet's confrontation with his father's ghost, which is highly dramatic and very intense.  By preceding this confrontation with a scene as light and fluffy as the one between Ophelia and her father, Shakespeare heightens the intensity of Hamlet's later scene. One is struck immediately by the contrast between the two fathers, as well as the two relationships. Ophelia loves her father dearly, apparently oblivious to the fact that he is a total fool; he gives her advice which unknowingly will lead to her death. Hamlet also loves his father with all his being; his father is not a fool, but the knowledge he imparts to Hamlet begins a long chain of events that will result in Hamlet's death as well. In this case the silly scene with Polonius, in addition to giving audience a well-deserved spell of

How does humor factor into a tragedy? Shakespeare knew the answer to this question and acted upon it quite frequently. Shakespeare has been known to write comedies and tragedies both but this does not qualify him at to not incorporate a little of each into each other. In the work of Hamlet there are many occasions where Shakespeare uses it for different effects. The main reason for the presence of humor within a tragedy is to keep the reader interested. Shakespeare uses many forms of humor including but not limiting wit, pun’s, and casual jokes. In the work of Hamlet, Hamlet is usually the character that Shakespeare chooses to bring out the humor in anything. He becomes a very