HAMLET         No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel?

       Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,

      Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

      O, that that earth which kept the world in awe

      Should patch a wall t’expel the water’s flaw.     (5.1.196-205)

Am I going too far? I don’t think I’m going too far, no, faith, not a jot. I’m just being logical: but to follow him thither with modesty and likelihood to lead it, just setting out the facts, perfectly seriously, soberly: Alexander died—yes?—Alexander was buried?—you’re still with me?—Alexander returneth to dust, just as the prayerbook says, yes?—the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, clay, mud to build with—and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? (Hamlet loves the bathos, the alliteration of beer-barrel, as he loves the wind, world, wall, water in his little verse.) What’s so far-fetched about that? Just a little plug of clay that used to be Alexander the Great? I mean—and he might sing, even, imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay—just the same (and Caesar is Alexander’s parallel in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, and Shakespeare had written Julius Caesar not long before, and there’s already the joke about Polonius playing Caesar—and Polonius is dead too)—Caesar himself might now stop a hole to keep the wind away. Plaster a crack in the wall, he might, and we none the wiser! O, that that earth which kept the world in awe should patch a wall t’expel the water’s flaw! He was earth all along, but now he’s just weather-proofing. There’s a wildness to it, it’s confrontational, gleeful, self-protective; this is just the way things go. Death and decay and loss and oblivion are bearable if they’re history, legend, turned to rhyme, funny song, intellectual showing-off. Yorick disappears; death’s more bearable if it’s not personal.