The Final Scene

In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, there's so much death all throughout the play you'd think that we were watching Night of the Living Dead rather than reading sixteenth century English literature. However the most iconic death scene has to be the finale, where everyone who had anything to do with moving the plot along dies, leaving poor Horatio and a very confused Fortinbras to their own devices. All the ways that characters die and the lack of prayer to "cleanse" their souls leaves the reader to interpret where the characters "went" after death is interesting to say the least.

Many death scenes in plays are boring as shit, and frankly I thought this scene was gonna be boring considering all the other deaths were stupid and anticlimactic. Like Ophelia  drowning, BORING! Get an original idea, Virginia Woolf beat you to the punch brother bear. (Granted this play came out before Virginia Woolf was even alive, but I knew about Woolf before I knew about Ophelia so I'm sticking to my point.) And Polonius being slaughtered through a curtain, I called that from a mile away. So to say I was surprised with how enthralled I was in all the death in the scene is an understatement.

The scene starts with Hamlet apologizing to Laertes about how much pain he's caused him, but like, in a super backward way. Like, he apologizes but for not being in control of his body and such. Anyway, Laertes accepts his apology and they begin their fencing match, now you need to know that Laertes and Claudius have a "fool proof plan" to kill Hamlet. Laertes' fencing foil will be poisoned and also sharp, during the match Laertes is to stab Hamlet and the poison will slowly kill him. Dumb I know, and apparently they realize it might not work so Claudius decides he'll poison Hamlet's drink too as like, a "just in case," sorta thing. So all that happens before the match. So they start the match and Hamlet scores two points right away, like boom, boom. after the second point is scored Gertrude fucking wipes his brow off and then proceeds to drink from the poisoned drink, as the match continues Laertes takes a cheap shot and Gertrude collapses, eventually she dies from the poison, and it's whatever, but what really makes this scene is Hamlet being a fucking boss. After Laertes takes the cheap shot and Hamlet puts two and two together when it comes to his mom he fist fights Laertes and then stabs him with his own foil. Bad ass right? But that's not all. As Laertes is dying he confesses to Hamlet that Claudius was the dang stranger that told him to poison everything, and essentially the person to kill his mother. So logically Hammy goes after his dumb uncle dad person with the poisoned foil. Unfortunately it "merely scratches" Claudius, and so Hamlet grabs the poisoned drink and forces it down Claudius' throat for him to swallow and die rather quickly, not allowing him to confess his sins like Laertes. So after getting his vengeance Hamlet slowly dies in Horatio's arms, asking him to tell his story. Horatio trying to be the best boy ever decides he wants to die with his best friend but Hamlet ends up saving his life (good choice).

After Hamlet dies Fortenbras walks in and is like, "Yo what the fuck happened here?" and Horatio is like, "Some hardcore shit man, a good man died and that sucks," and Fortenbras notices Hamlet's life less body and is like, "Heck! I'm the King now," and that's, well that's pretty cool.

So in conclusion, the final death scene is fucking metal and the best death scene in the entire play. Mostly because Hamlet is a boss and just pushes through the pain to ensure his trash uncle dies a painful death.