That
Shakespeare introduced such scenes and characters with deliberate
intention, and with a view to artistic relief and contrast, there can
hardly be a doubt. We must take it for granted that a man whose works
show everywhere the results of judgment sometimes acted with forethought.
I find the springs of the profoundest sorrow and pity in this hardened
indifference of the grave-diggers, in their careless discussion as to
whether Ophelia's death was by suicide or no, in their singing and
jesting at their dreary work.
"A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
For--and a shrouding-sheet:
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet!"
_We_ know who is to be the guest of this earthen hospitality,--how much
beauty, love, and heartbreak are to be covered in that pit of clay. All
we remember of Ophelia reacts upon us with tenfold force, and we recoil
from our amusement at the ghastly drollery of the two delvers with a
shock of horror. That the unconscious Hamlet should stumble on _this_
grave of all others, that it should be _here_ that he should pause to
muse humorously on death and decay,--all this prepares us for the
revulsion of passion in the next scene, and for the frantic confession,--
"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not with all _their_ quantity of love
Make up my sum!"
And it is only here that such an asseveration would be true even to the
feeling of the moment; for it is plain from all we know of Hamlet that he
could not so have loved Ophelia, that he was incapable of the
self-abandonment of a true passion, that he would have analyzed this
emotion as he does all others, would have peeped and botanized upon it
till it became to him a mere matter of scientific interest.
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