William Shakespeare managed to pack an awful lot of drama into his graveyard scene in Hamlet. In fewer than three hundred lines his clowns discuss the topics of suicide, class privilege and the gravedigger’s craft, and engage in outrageous wordplay, while the central character articulates a profound meditation on mortality and its democratic nature. Hamlet’s birth is discussed, as is his madness, and there is still time and space for Ophelia’s funeral, some melodramatic posturing by Laertes and Hamlet and...
