The Hamlet Project

Throws up a skull.
I mean if ever a line was made for a gif – it’s this.
I want the gravedigger to vomit a skull.
I mean – that’s the thing with these stage directions. Only a handful were written by Shakespeare himself – or the original printers of the plays.
Is this one? I would be surprised if it was but…as it is…
Just picture someone vomiting a skull. It’s clearly not what’s happening here. It’s just that an editor has felt that it may not be obvious to the reader what Hamlet is referring to and so invents a stage direction that brings the skull into it.
But here we see the way language can confuse. S/he means that a skull comes out of the grave in some way, either in the hand of the gravedigger or on his shovel or flying out in a spray of dirt. But instead it’s possible to see this in exactly the wrong way as a puking gravedigger. Throwing up bones like an owl does.