What is the image of Hamlet holding a skull supposed to represent?

Answer 1

Hamlet holding YoricK's skull represents his closeness to death and realization of the true physical aspects of death. It also represents confusion in the to be or not to be speech. He is deciding whether it is better to be alive or dead or to have not existed at all. He mourns the fact that all that live must die and realizes that once dead, station and rank mean nothing and a king is as good as a beggar.

Answer 2

Hamlet stages the "Murder of Gonzago" play, which Hamlet calls the "Mousetrap" play, to depict Claudius murdering his father with poison. That happens in Scene 9, which is Act 3 scene 2.

So, it's supposed to represent Claudius killing King Hamlet.

Answer 3

He holds Yorick's skull. Yorick was a jester, a kind of comedian, when Hamlet was a child. He had died some years before, and the gravedigger happened to find it when he was digging a grave for Ophelia. Holding the skull of someone he knew, who was really funny in his day, gets Hamlet thinking about death, how it comes to everyone, and how all of what we were in life disappears when we die. The most beautiful woman in the world, ponders Hamlet, will end up looking like Yorick, no matter how much makeup she puts on: "Get thee to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that."

It is not an important moment but it is an iconic one. Hamlet spends a large part of the play Wrestling with what it means to be dead.

Answer 4

Yorick's.