Why does ophelia get buried in the churchyard

Laertes argues with the priest over Ophelia 's burial. Claudius ' command at inquest, he argues, should grant her all the rites of a Christian burial.

The priest refuses, saying that, because she committed suicide, he must deny Ophelia the requiem mass and other trappings of a Christian burial, even though Ophelia will be buried on sacred ground. Laertes insults the priest. When Ophelia's body is placed into the grave, Hamlet watches the Queen strew the coffin with flowers. Hamlet and Laertes argue over who loved Ophelia best. Laertes tries to strangle Hamlet, but attendants separate them. Gertrude decries her son's madness.

Claudius asks Horatio to look after Hamlet and promises Laertes immediate satisfaction. She receives at her sacred altar the serf and the monarch on equal footing, just as they are in the sight of God. In reply to the clown, the sexton ironically deprecates the fact that the world looks with more leniency upon the drowning or hanging of aristocrats, than of their poorer and "even Christians.

Another error as palpable as the clown's is found in a recent edition of Hamlet , which we quote merely as a sample of the misleading notes which often "illuminate" our modern school editions of the tragedy. Commenting on the words "out of Christian burial," the author in wondrous simplicity affirms: "The Christianity of Shakespeare's day prescribed that one who ended his own life should be buried without service, at cross roads, and with a stake driven through his heart.

How the young student's mind and heart must be stirred to rebellion against a religion which sanctioned a practice so inhuman and repulsive. But is it fact or fiction? Anglicanism was a new state religion established by law of Parliament; Puritanism was another new creed, but non-conformist and in opposition to the state religion. The charge, if made against the Catholic Church, is altogether false. The old religion, in which Shakespeare was born and raised, never ordained that "a suicide be buried at cross roads, nor that a stake be driven through his heart.

To the latter class belong the insane, and to them, as to Ophelia, she accords all her sacred rites, as well as burial in consecrated ground; to the former class belong all who in sane mind wittingly and voluntarily violate God's mandate against self-slaughter. Such, because dying in rebellion against the Creator, she refuses to recognize as of her fold, and, therefore, takes no part in their burial.

If from a popular standpoint there be crimes of darker hue than suicide, there is none other by which from a Catholic standpoint a man so utterly renounces his religion and his God. A common law, which was prevalent throughout Christendom in Shakespeare's time, held that one who encouraged and assisted another to commit suicide was guilty of murder as a principal.

Though the willful suicide was denied Christian burial, his friends were free to bury him where and how they pleased, but not with the sacred rites of the Church, nor within her consecrated grounds.

Horatio and Hamlet enter and watch the gravediggers at work. As the gravediggers work, they unearth the skulls of people who have been buried in the same churchyard in the past. Hamlet looks at these various skulls and muses on what their owners must have done during their lives.

Where be his quiddities now. Hamlet asks the gravedigger whose grave he digs, and the gravedigger spars with him verbally, first claiming that the grave is his own, since he is digging it, then that the grave belongs to no man and no woman, because men and women are living things and the occupant of the grave will be dead.

The gravedigger, who does not recognize Hamlet as the prince, tells him that he has been a gravedigger since King Hamlet defeated the elder Fortinbras in battle, the very day on which young Prince Hamlet was born. Hamlet tells Horatio that as a child he knew Yorick and is appalled at the sight of the skull. He realizes forcefully that all men will eventually become dust, even great men like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.

Hamlet imagines that Julius Caesar has disintegrated and is now part of the dust used to patch up a wall. Suddenly, the funeral procession for Ophelia enters the churchyard, including Claudius , Gertrude , Laertes, and many mourning courtiers.

He and Horatio hide as the procession approaches the grave. As Ophelia is laid in the earth, Hamlet realizes it is she who has died. At the same moment, Laertes becomes infuriated with the priest, who says that to give Ophelia a proper Christian burial would profane the dead. Grief-stricken and outraged, Hamlet bursts upon the company, declaring in agonized fury his own love for Ophelia.