everyone is dead.

welcome to the end of Hamlet, shakespeare's tragedy. here's how it goes: everyone dies. the end.
but before everyone dies, hamlet has a nice little chat with a common gravedigger.
when we talked about the gravedigger, who's supposed to be played by a clown, we decided that he and hamelt were good conversation partners. it's funny; hamlet hasn't been matched up evenly with anyone in terms of his intellectual prowess/wit. this is the first time we see it challenged, and hamlet loses. a simple, poor, almost beggarly man--with a downright depressing and dirty job -- beasts hamlet at a word joust. it's completely unexpected, and kind of humbles hamlet enough to put him on the same playing field as the gravedigger.
equally unexpected is the personality and lightness in character of the gravedigger. after all, he spends his entire day digging holes in the ground for dead people, and somehow he's managed to make light work of it-- singing to skulls, making fun of them, chatting w/ strangers about the former occupiers of the skeletons. he echoes hamlet's style of conversation, by avoiding directly answering questions-- he skirts around the subject using puns and playing with words, even more than hamlet.
hamlet, on the other hand, opens up a lot to the gravedigger, while the gravedigger remains pretty self-contained. his whole speech about yorick is very personal, and very heartfelt (especiall in branagh's version-- all the flashbacks certainly help us in that direction). it's interesting that he is so open w/ such a stranger in this sense.
it also helps that the gravedigger doesn't know that hamlet is...well, hamlet. this allows him to talk more freely, and it's great for hamlet, because he gets to hear how his banishment was perceived by the rest of the world outside of the court.