He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone, / At his head a grass green turf, / At his heels a stone.
Act IV, Scene 5 · Ophelia
Context
Ophelia sings a fragment of a ballad about a dead man's burial, ignoring Gertrude's attempt to redirect the conversation.
Analysis
The repetition 'He is dead and gone' creates a rhythmic finality, almost like a nursery rhyme, that makes Polonius's death feel both simple and irreversible. The plain visual details—'grass green turf,' 'stone'—contrast with the elaborate language of court mourning elsewhere in the play, as if Ophelia's madness strips death down to what is physically, uncomfortably real.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Ophelia's mad songs function as a form of truth-telling the court cannot manage—her blunt, repetitive phrasing forces the audience to confront death as a fact, not a metaphor, in a play where everyone else hides behind rhetoric.