What are some examples of the use of prose in Hamlet?

In
general, in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater, prose has a variety of purposes by which
certain passages are set off from the rest of the action. It is difficult to identify a single
or uniformly thematic reason Shakespeare and the other dramatists depart from the normal . Often
prose is used for an outburst or a genuine loss of control where a character goes off on a
rantsometimes shamming insanity. In , probably the most striking instance
is the stream of abusepours forth atwhen she returns his "remembrances" to him. If one
tries to convert the following into verse, it doesn't work; it is too manic, too
psychotic:

Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things
that it were better my mother had not borne me. (3.1)

Hamlet is clearly out of control. This comes on the heels of the most famousin the
English language. In Hamlet, Shakespeare creates incredible tension by
abruptly switching moods, in this case following a measured, philosophical statement about death
with a crazed rant. When Hamlet storms off, Ophelia is left to lament the situation in
verse:

Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The contrast could not be stronger between this and the exchange
between herself and Hamlet where she has hardly known what to say in order to defend herself. We
also see the degree to which Ophelia is in control and Hamlet is not.

Yet
prose is employed for other purposes. Hamlet gives his instructions to the actors in prose. This
is because it is just ordinary information without any profundity that would require a poetic
expression. But also it is one of those instances where Shakespeare is perhaps putting his own
thoughts into the mouth of one of hiseven more directly than he usually does. Hamlet's judgments
seem as if they would fit right into a pamphlet or critical treatise on acting:

there be players that I have seen and heard others praise [and that
highly] not to speak it profanely, that neither have the accent of Christians nor the gait of
Christian, pagan nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's
journeymen had made men, and not made them well

Another
typical use of prose occurs in the comic episodes. In the social constraints of the time, it
wouldn't have seemed appropriate for working-class characters to speak in poetry (even if they
have something poetic to say). In act 5, scene 1, the exchanges among the gravediggers, Hamlet,
andwould probably lose something anyway by being conveyed in verse, regardless of the social
status of the men preparing Ophelia's grave.

Why is this? It may be partly
because much that is natural to verse is antithetical to boisterous humor. Even while Hamlet
muses to himself about the transience of life as he holds a skull, theis largely comical. He may
be making his observations philosophically, but his thoughts about the imagined
"lawyer" whose remains he is addressing focus, arguably, upon something ridiculous
inherent in the process of life, of which the law is a microcosm:

Where be [the lawyer's] quiddities now, his quillities, his cases, his tenures and his
tricks? Why does he permit this rude knave to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel,
and not tell him of his action of battery?

Yet it is
extraordinary that the tragicomedy of this observation is able to be expressed in ordinary
prose.

A final reason that prose is used is simply for variety. We, as
readers or audience, need a break from the supercharged energy of Shakespeare's verse. The prose
passages provide relaxation or relief from the seriousness of the verse and its beauty and
profundity. It's similar to those scenes in film when the background music stops and there is
only unaccompanied dialogue. Yet in Shakespeare even the prose interludes are poetic and
"musical."