LAERTES        Must there no more be done?

PRIEST                       No more be done.

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing a requiem and such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls.

LAERTES                    Lay her i’th’ earth,

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest,

A ministering angel shall my sister be

When thou liest howling.

HAMLET         [aside to Horatio]      What, the fair Ophelia?         (5.1.224-231)

Laertes tries again, wretchedly, stubbornly: must there no more be done? (he’s also asking, was there something more that I could have done, to prevent this? anything he can secure for her now is too little, too late). The priest can only repeat, no more be done, and it’s like an echoing bell, tolling, done, done. Dead and gone. Then the priest really pushes it, in an elaboration which seems unnecessarily cruel: we should profane the service of the dead to sing a requiem and such rest to her as to peace-parted souls. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of them, everyone who died a nice tidy death, if SHE got what she doesn’t really deserve! it’d devalue the currency, even: what, a requiem mass just for any old person, no questions asked? not on my watch. Laertes seems to change tack, perhaps conceding defeat, or not even dignifying that with a response: lay her i’th’ earth—the starkness of it, and so gentle, so final—and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring. The violets that withered all when her father died; the flowers that Gertrude has already decked her with in verse. An attempt at redemption. Then he has a final go: I tell thee, churlish priest—you common, cruel jobsworth—a ministering angel shall my sister be, in paradise, with God and His saints, when thou liest howling. She’ll be in heaven alright, and soon—and you’ll be screaming out your time in purgatory—or all eternity in hell.

Hamlet’s twigged: sister. What, the fair Ophelia? this? here? dead?