In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet undergoes a series of changes of his complex attitude ultimately succumbing to a hopeless state of being. Through the use of sorrowful diction, historical allusion and dark imagery the spiraling of Hamlet’s state of being becomes apparent.
The development of Hamlet’s complex attitude becomes vividly apparent through the sorrowful diction Hamlet uses to speak. He cries sorrowfully once the graveyard digger notifies of Hamlet of the person whom the skull once pertained too: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him” (Line 190). Hamlet begins reminiscing of his numerous fond memories with Yorick, the court jester. Through Yorick’s skull, Hamlet remembers a better time in his life that once excluded this despair that Hamlet now finds at every corner. The better times that once were in abundance are all gone. Hamlet asks sorrowfully with rhetorical questions where are Yorick’s “gambols, [his] songs? [His] flashes of merriment that were won’t to set the table on a roar?” which only drives Hamlet deeper into an abyss of hopelessness. Hamlet brings about the happening of Alexander the great with deep despair. Hamlet suggests that if "Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust" Hamlet will also do the same as the mighty Alexander and return to the earth where sorrow and despair do not lay.
The historical allusions Hamlet says are not meant to reminisce on their greatness and the possibilities man can reach, but rather remember that these great men in history also died and have become part of the earth which causes Hamlet to further deviate from his once cheerful state of being towards despair. Hamlet suggests to Horatio that Alexander the Great could possibly be “stopping a bung-hole” at this current time (Line 211). A quite peculiar assertion that Hamlet suggests but later reveals the logic behind his assertion: “Alexander reurneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of...