Act V Threads Character | Analysis | Hamlet | Hamlet questions the methods of the gravediggers. He seems confused that they are happy to bury the dead. He then criticizes them for playing with a skull of a dead person like it is a toy. Horatio adds in that this must be what makes them sane if they spend all day with dead bodies. They would otherwise go crazy. The gravedigger doesn’t recognize Hamlet as the prince, and tells him that he has been a gravedigger since King Hamlet beat the Fortinbras, which was when the younger Hamlet was born. Hamlet picks up a skull, and the gravedigger tells him that the skull was Yorick’s, King Hamlet’s jester. Hamlet told Horatio when he was a kid, he knew Yorick and the sight of his skull shocked him. He came to terms with the fact that all men will eventually fade, and he uses examples like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. (V, i, 67-197). A guy named Osric gets Laertes and Hamlet to have a fencing match, which was actually a set up by Claudius. This ended up in him murdering Claudius and him being poisoned by Laertes sword in the match. (V, ii, 361-405) | Gertrude | Gertrude drinks the wine that Claudius had poisoned for Hamlet during the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes. She ignores Claudius’s warning to not drink the wine and see suffered the consequences of her own death. (V.ii.235) | Claudius | Claudius and Laertes put there plan to kill Hamlet into effect. Claudius poisons the wine that Hamlet would drink during the fencing match. He puts a pearl in it and asks Hamlet to drink it after he gets the first hit in the fencing match against Hamlet. His plan backfires when Hamlet obtains the poisoned tip sword from Laertes and stabs him. He is also forced to drink from the poisonous cup and dies right after at the hands of Hamlet. (V,ii, 212-357) | Grave Diggers | The gravediggers argue about if Ophelia