William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is easily considered one of his top plays. It is written as a tragedy but is full of subtle and persistent comedy. Shakespeare uses humor for many different reasons in his plays. It is used as a device to distract the audience away from the constant tragedy and dark plot turns that are throughout the play. The few comedic scenes entwined with the tragic plot serves to keep the audience interested in an otherwise bleak play and to calm down the tragic feeling momentarily in order to make it more intensifying. Shakespeare’s use of humor and bawdy innuendoes also serve to keep the poorer, less educated audience members interested in the plays. Sometimes humor is even used to spotlight a serious topic in the …show more content…
The grave diggers are considered clowns of the play and provide a unique kind of humor throughout their scene. Besides the comic relief of the clowns, two other important things come out of this scene. Criticism of the organized religion and the universality of death. During this scene we see a glimpse of a normal Hamlet no longer acting like a mad man. He has normal discussions with Horatio and jokes though out the scene. He and Horatio watch the grave digger as he digs and sings unaware of their presence. Then observe as he tosses skulls and bones from the hole and they discuss who the bones could belong to. “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if “twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o’erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? They converse how people all die and decompose the same and it does not matter who or what title you carried. When buried, we all rot the same. “To what base uses we may return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till ‘a find it stopping a