Student Question
What are the humorous scenes and witty lines in Hamlet, and what is their tone and purpose?
Quick answer:
Shakespeare's Hamlet is laced with humorous lines and scenes, including Hamlet's puns and insults and his dark humor in the graveyard. This humor lightens the tone of the play, keeps Hamlet from actually going mad, and offers a lesson on the need to laugh even in the darkest times.
Shakespeare's Hamlet is a rather dark play indeed, but it is also laced with wit and humor. In fact, if Hamlet didn't have a sense of humor and a witty tongue, he would probably actually go mad instead of merely pretending. Let's brainstorm a few examples of humor in Hamlet.
Hamlet's very first words in the play are actually a pun. He speaks of Claudius, describing him as "A little more than kin, and less than kind." Claudius is both Hamlet's uncle (his father's brother) and, now, his mother's new husband. He is indeed a little too much kin to Hamlet at this point, as the latter knows that Claudius is merely usurping the throne by marrying Gertrude, and that makes Claudius much less than kind.
In fact, Hamlet comments to Horatio on the matter of his mother's rapid remarriage. Horatio tells Hamlet that he has...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
come for his father's funeral. Hamlet inserts a bit of humor into his response, saying "I think it was to see my mother's wedding." Horatio, in turn, admits that did indeed happen quite quickly afterward, to which Hamlet responds with a cutting joke: "Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked-meats / did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."
When Hamlet is pretending to be mad, he lets some humorous lines (packed with underlying meaning) slip in to his conversation. When Polonius asks Hamlet if the young man knows him, Hamlet replies, "Excellent well; you are a fishmonger." The response confuses Polonius but gives Hamlet (and the audience) a private chuckle, for he is insulting the older man under the cover of madness.
Even in the graveyard scene, Hamlet indulges in some dark humor. He looks at a skull and speculates that it might have belonged to a lawyer in life. "Where be his quiddities now," he asks, "his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?" They have all abandoned him, and he is forced to "suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel" and cannot even charge him with battery.
We could identify many other examples as well, but these give you an idea. Shakespeare inserts such humor to lighten the tone of what would otherwise be an extremely dark play. In doing so, he actually mirrors real life, for life is never completely dark. There is always something humorous to discover, even if the humor is ironic and a bit cynical. Further, the humor, as I said above, actually keeps Hamlet from truly going crazy under his stressful circumstances.