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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help
Billy, or shales[eare as you call him, often uses humour to eliviate the
tension of preceding scenes. Often, little jokes are made after a murder
(like the porter after Macbeth kills the king), or after a battle scene
the clown/ fool characters have their moment on stage. Try and imagine how
uncomforatable it would be to watch if all the humour was taken out of
Hamlet. It would be back-to-back death, murder, and madness. (If this is
a little hard to imagine, think of Pulp Fiction without the witty banter
and jokes. It would just be one death after another and not very interesting,
right?)Sometimes these characters appear at the start of a particularly violent
or rough act, as the Gravediggers do in Act V. The audience is about to sit
through a half-hour or so of swordplay and one person slain after another.
The humour of the Gravediggers allows one's body to drain of any tension
left over from previous scenes, and leaves it free to build-up a whole new
anxiety.Posted by LunarCaustic on April 22, 1997 at 09:58:34
In Reply to "Hamlet Act5sc.1 - conversation of gravediggers/comedy in tragedy" posted by agata on April 20, 1997 at 13:03:01
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 4.2.97: Top | Help