What happens in Chapter XXXI of Great Expectations?
Pip and Herbert go to see a performance of Hamlet, featuring their acquaintance Mr. Wopsle as the Prince. The show is a disaster: the king and queen sit on a kitchen table, the Ghost carries a script and coughs, the Queen of Denmark is derisively called "the kettle-drum" for her brass accessories, and the audience in the gallery heckles every scene. Wopsle himself becomes the target of laughter—urged to sing "Rule Britannia," unfavorably compared to the player he advises, and met with shouts of "Wai-ter!" during the churchyard scene. After the show, a Jewish man with heavily painted eyebrows stops Pip and Herbert and takes them backstage to meet "Mr. Waldengarver," Wopsle's stage name. In a cramped, hot dressing room, the dresser kneels to take off Wopsle's pricey stockings while Wopsle, still dressed in his "princely sables," seeks compliments from Pip and Herbert. Herbert whispers cues, and Pip dutifully echoes them, calling the performance "Massive and concrete." Wopsle brushes off the audience's mockery, blames the heckler on the actor playing Claudius, and claims his own performance was "a little classic and thoughtful." Feeling sympathy for him, Pip invites Wopsle to dinner at Barnard's, where he stays until two in the morning, reflecting on his "success." Meanwhile, Pip goes to bed feeling miserable, thinking of Estella, and dreams that his expectations are revoked and that he must either marry Herbert's Clara or perform Hamlet for Miss Havisham's Ghost in front of twenty thousand people.
Analysis
The chapter unfolds as a sustained comic set-piece that reveals the ironic gap between artistic pretension and the absurdity of reality. Dickens divides it into three parts: the performance, the backstage encounter, and Pip's disheartening aftermath. The audience's constant commentary serves as an anti-chorus, deflating every tragic moment — the Ghost is told to "turn over," Hamlet is cheered on with "Hear, hear!" when he questions what he should do while caught between earth and heaven, and Ophelia's madness is belittled with the comment, "Now the baby's put to bed let's have supper!" The crowd's voice, delivered in a casual dialect, sharply contrasts with the elevated language of the tragedy, generating comedy from this clash of styles.
The backstage scene shifts the humor from broad farce to something more unsettling. Wopsle's decision to adopt the name "Waldengarver" reflects his self-deception, and his condescending request for praise — asking how his "reading of the character" went — is punctured by the dresser's blunt physical critique: it's not about interpretation, but about leg profile. The dresser's red-wafer story reduces the art of acting to a focus on visible shin-patches, undermining Wopsle's grandiosity without him being aware of it.
Throughout, Pip embodies a role of complicity in dishonesty: he laughs despite himself, repeats Herbert's whispered compliments as if they were his own, and dismisses the heckler as "drunk" to spare Wopsle's feelings. The chapter wraps up by transitioning from comedy to sadness: Pip's dream — where his expectations are shattered and he has to perform Hamlet without knowing the lines — mirrors Wopsle's actual failure and links the inadequacy of theater to Pip's own concerns about identity and performance.
Key quotes from Chapter XXXI
“I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle’s elocution”
Pip reflects on his own reaction to the performance, just after the tragedy ends.
““My view is a little classic and thoughtful for them here; but they will improve, they will improve.””
Mr. Waldengarver (Wopsle) dismisses the hostile gallery audience while still in his dressing room.
“miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s Ghost”
The final sentences of the chapter, describing Pip's dream after returning to bed.
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