Before his journey to England, Hamlet is confused and depressed and in touch with his raw, damaged emotions. In the immortal 'to be' speech, he sensitively weighs up the value of life against the value of death. He is sick of the world and wants to leave it. But the option of death looks uncertain to him. He imagines many different things about the afterlife, "for in that sleep of death what dreams may come?", "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns". It puzzles him. It interests him. He sees death as a surreal and strange journey into the unknown.
Later in the play he returns from England and he has cut himself off from his emotions. You might say he has grown up, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. He holds the silent, mouldy skull of Yorick, a court-jester who once was a laugh-loving, joke-cracking, party animal. Hamlet knew him as a child, and feels nothing personal as he stares into the empty eye-scokets of someone he once loved.
And he sees nothing in Yorick's lifeless head except decaying organic matter that one day may be recycled as something as lifeless and ordinary as clay wall-covering.
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