An Analytical Essay on Comic Relief in Hamlet In Hamlet, most of the comic relief is dark and depressing. The main character is obsessed with death and makes morbid jokes about old age, deceit and corpses. This side of the character is shown so that the reader can understand how much this disturbs the prince. The result is a play with some very depressing scenes. Hamlet's negative attitude gives way to many sadistic jokes about the events around him. He tells his friend Orazio that the food brought for the funeral was also served at the wedding. This line is sad because Hamlet is still grieving as he is forced to endure the stinging, incestuous image of his mother sharing a bed with his uncle. This disturbing moment for him leads to most of his depressing humor. His family's blatant deception leads him to sarcastically state that if the world is honest, then the end of the world must be near. The reader can identify with Hamlet's feelings of bitterness and disillusionment due to his sarcastic reactions. Shortly thereafter, Polonius becomes the object of Hamlet's ridicule. The appearance of this aspect of humor is not surprising due to the cruel nature of the work. Polonius is an old man who forgets what he is saying in the middle of a sentence and absolutely cannot get to the point quickly. Hamlet calls him a "great child" and Rosencrantz says that as men grow old, they mentally become children. After Polonius is killed, Hamlet refers to the removal of the body from the room as "dragging the entrails." Since the body has been stabbed, the reader can assume that Hamlet is making light of the bloody, most likely disemboweled corpse. First, Polonius is mocked because of his age; then Hamlet returns to his dark humor. The most common form of gallows humor is the way Hamlet trivializes death. He makes a lot of jokes about this. When he describes how a king might be digested by a beggar, one might imagine Claudius cringing. Along with the image of death, Hamlet uses the word "progress", which indicates a royal journey. Jokes the king and death at the same time. Later, during the cemetery scene, he asks Yorick's skull, "What a shame?" He's asking if the skull is lowered into the mouth or depressed, which is a disgusting question to ask a long-dead skull..