Wednesday, March 5, 2014

How old is Hamlet at the end of the play?How do you know? What character reveals this information?

There's no definite answer to this one, and it's a question that scholars love to argue about. The scene in question is the gravediggers scene, Act 5, Scene 1. Hamlet asks the gravedigger how long he's been digging graves, and the gravedigger responds that he came to the job "the very day that young Hamlet was born".

A few lines later, he confirms that he has been "sexton here,
man and boy, thirty years". Hamlet then, if we believe this evidence, must be thirty years old.

But doesn't Hamlet come back from university to his father's funeral - why would a thirty year old be studying at university? Surely Hamlet is a young man? It is perfectly plausible to suggest that the gravedigger might mean 'thirty years' in a very general way, rather than as a specific detail, in order to support such an argument.

Some critics think that Hamlet was originally written as a younger man, but the popularity of the play and the ageing of Richard Burbage (who originally played the role) forced Shakespeare to rewrite it to accommodate his leading man.

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