A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare - Y Is For Yorick

 

Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet with Yorick. Fair Use. 

So, at nearly the end of the Challenge, I’ve come up with the only Y I could think of in Shakespeare. There may be more, of course. 

Who is Yorick? He was the jester at the Danish royal court in Hamlet. We never actually meet him, because he is dead, and has been for twenty-three years by Act 5 of Hamlet! We just hear about him in the Gravedigger scene. But the image of Hamlet holding a skull is iconic; it’s only one scene, late in the play, but when most of us think of Hamlet, that’s the image we see. The photo above is Laurence Olivier in the 1940s movie; the Gravedigger was played by Stanley Holloway, later to play the role of Eliza Doolittle’s father in My Fair Lady. 

Hamlet and his friend Horatio have arrived home, and are in the churchyard, where Yorick is being dug up to make room for Ophelia, whose funeral is about to happen. They meet a couple of gravediggers, one of whom speaks to them. 

There is a conversation about the Gravedigger’s job, how long bodies last and so on. 

Then he lifts out a skull. When Hamlet asks whose it is, the Gravedigger chuckles and tells him it was Yorick. This man remembers Yorick all right, telling Hamlet and Horatio that he remembers Yorick once pouring a flagon of Rhenish wine on his head. “A pestilence on him for a mad rogue!”

 Presumably even the castle gravediggers are invited to feasts there, and the wine pouring was for the amusement of the feasting people. 

Hamlet asks to hold the skull and reminisces on his childhood memories of the man. 

“Alas, poor Yorick!” he tells his friend. “I knew him, Horatio. A man of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…” He remembers getting “a thousand” piggy backs on Yorick’s back, kissing him and watching him play. Now Hamlet is sad, seeing what’s left of him. That leads to his thoughts about life and death in general, moving away from the jester who made him happy as a child to - well, everyone. The most beautiful woman will end this way, he says. The most famous generals in world history might well be plugging a barrel somewhere - everyone will end here. 

And soon after, Ophelia’s funeral procession arrives and Yorick is not really relevant any more. But several moments of Shakespeare’s longest play are devoted to someone Hamlet cared about deeply but whom we never meet. 

Here is a link to the Gravedigger scene as performed by Laurence Olivier and Stanley Holloway. 

https://youtu.be/WAbuojia1zc

Tomorrow will be my final Shakespeare post. Z is for…Zzzz. If you want to know more, see you then!