Quote Analysis

Hamlet continues reflecting on a skull, now imagining it as belonging to a courtier who once flattered noblemen but is now reduced to being knocked around by a gravedigger's shovel.

Personifying death as 'Lady Worm' (instead of using an abstract term) gives decay a gendered, almost courtly identity—worms become the skull's new mistress, replacing whatever lady the courtier served in life. 'Chapless' (jawless) and 'mazard' (head, slang) are brutally physical, the colloquial 'mazard' in particular reducing what was once a courtier's refined head to a slang term for skull. The image of being 'knocked about' by a sexton's spade treats the skull with the same casual roughness the gravedigger showed earlier, making physical what Hamlet sees as a social leveling.

Support a thesis that Hamlet finds a kind of satisfaction in death's leveling power—the relish in 'Lady Worm' and the violence of 'knocked about' suggest he takes pleasure in imagining how death humiliates those who relied on status and flattery in life.