#8

  Shakespeare's Hamlet deals with issues surrounding life and death.  Hamlet is a young man stuck in a world that no longer makes sense after the death of his father.  He watches his mother cavort happily with a new husband only a few months after her first husband's death.  He sees his uncle, the new king of Denmark and husband to his mother, seem to benefit after killing his father.  The world is not what it seems.  These events bring Hamlet to question life and death.  Earlier in the story Hamlet talks of how death is an unexplored territory, though many have gone to it none have returned to tell of what it is really like.  Hamlet continues his questioning and inquiry into death just moments before the burial of Ophelia.  He watches a gravedigger dig up skulls that obstruct the path for Ophelia's grave.  He sees the decaying bones of noblemen, jester, and poor men, all in the same state of decomposition.  He is spurred to ask whether even Alexander the Great, one of the greatest rulers the world has ever seen, also met the same decomposition after death.  Hamlet is then brought to the realization, "Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander/ returneth to dust; the dust is earth.../Imperious Caesar, dead and and turned to clay.../ O, that that earth which kept the world in awe/ Should patch a wall't expel the (winter's) flaw" (V.I.216-223).  Hamlet realizes that all must must die, no matter how great they are.  In the end no matter the afterlife they are laid within the soil, their bones become dust.  No amount of greatness on earth distinguishes great men from poor men in death.  All become of the same earth, the same dust that they toiled in, be it in ways great or small.  This type of realization and understanding was typical of the humanist era.  Scholars began realizing that no matter their accomplishments on earth they would meet their end in dust.  Of dust they came and to dust they would return.  Shakespeare embodies the humanist questioning and cognizance in Hamlet's character.  People were seeing truth about the world.  On earth all men were buried into the ground and decayed no matter their status on earth.  Their only hope could be the afterlife in Heaven were they in touch with God, or damnation had they been out of communion.  Yet even these assurances were beginning to be questioned during the time period.