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Hamlet · William Shakespeare · c. 1600
HAMLET
A prince, handed the skull of a man who once carried him as a child, discovers that all wit and beauty come to the same dirt. Grief cools into something almost peaceful.
The speech92 words · 3 beats
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Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?turn
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
- Speaking to
- Horatio, beside him at the grave, and the skull itself.
- What just happened
- In a churchyard, a gravedigger has tossed up a skull and named it: Yorick, the old court jester. Hamlet takes the skull in his hands and recognizes it.
- Objective
- To make the fact of universal death sit still long enough to look at it.
- The turn
- 'Where be your gibes now?' — fond memory tips into the cold arithmetic of decay.
- Watch out for
- The trap is lugubrious graveyard gloom. It opens warm, even funny, with real love for Yorick; the chill arrives mid-thought. 'Now get you to my lady's chamber' is a bitter joke, not a moan. Keep it conversational to Horatio.