Can some one thoroughly explain this HAMLET quote to me?
In the last act we find out from the clown (gravedigger) that Hamlet was born on the very day that his father won some land by killing Fortinbras Sr. On that same day, the gravedigger was hired. In the first act, we had learned that Hamlet was heir to the land thus acquired. In the last act, Hamlet comments on an open grave that it might be long to a buyer of land, whose deeds would scarcely fit in the grave, “must th’inheritor have no more, ha?” Hamlet had commented about Fortinbras Jr sending thousands to their death for a worthless peace of land hardly big enough to bury the dead. In the first act, we learned that Hamlet’s father and the land he had won was “the question of these wars.” So Hamlet was born to be yet another warmongering king, killing for dirt. Hamlet didn’t wanna do it. Another motif is that that grave in the final scene was like a “womb of earth.” There are various lines in the play that equate birth with death. Here’s something I posted in the yahoo group, Shakespe
