HAMLET Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore 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 jibes 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 chapfallen. 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. (5.1.174-184)
Prize for the most-frequently-misquoted? Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio—and the emphasis has to be on knew, a ghastly, shocking contrast to the anonymity and indistinguishability, the utter loss of distinction on which Hamlet has just been mordantly riffing. I knew him! A fellow of infinite jest—so FUNNY—of most excellent fancy; he was wild, so inventive, such imagination. (A formative influence on Hamlet himself.) He hath bore me on his back a thousand times—Yorick becomes a father-figure, the child being piggy-backed, a contrast, perhaps, to the stern, idealised warrior-king. This was the man around whose neck the child clung, riding high in gleeful triumph. But now how abhorred in my imagination it is. That all feels creepy, wrong now. My gorge rises at it; bit sick, to be honest. (A retch, sometimes. The skull grins on, unaffected by this posthumous rejection.) Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. I loved him—and it’s an uncomplicated memory of childhood affection, safety, closeness. Gone.
Where be your jibes now—your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?Ubi sunt, the great lament for lost things, the loved things of the past, where have they gone, where are they now? The jokes and funny stories, your silly dancing and comic songs, the way you could have everyone screaming with laughter over dinner? The quickness—merriment as a flash—that’s shaped Hamlet—and it’s a contrast with the stillness, the thingness of the skull, and its silence. Not one now here to mock your own grinning, quite chapfallen. Now you can’t even poke fun at yourself, as you smile on, in the rictus of death, dejected and jawless. I tell you what: now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Is Hamlet thinking of his mother or of Ophelia, or just being generally misogynist in this standard criticism of cosmetics? Do all you like, love, slap it on, you’re still going to die. (The beautiful woman looking in the mirror and seeing a skeleton was a standard memento mori in art.) Make her laugh at that, go on.
