Yorick (Hamlet)

Yorick
Yorick's skull in the 'gravedigger scene' (5.1), depicted by Eugène Delacroix.
Creator	William Shakespeare
Play	Hamlet
Date	16/17th century

Yorick is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a monologue from Prince Hamlet on mortality:

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? (Hamlet, V.i)

The opening words are very commonly misquoted as "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well."

It has often been suggested that Shakespeare intended his audience to connect Yorick with the Elizabethan comedian Richard Tarlton, a star performer of the pre-Shakespearian stage, who had been dead for around the same time as Yorick in the play.

The contrast between Yorick as "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" and his grim remains is a variation on the theme of earthly vanity (cf. Vanitas): death being unavoidable, the things of this life are inconsequential.

This theme of Memento mori ('Remember you shall die') is common in 16th- and 17th-century painting, appearing in art throughout Europe. Images of Mary Magdalene regularly showed her contemplating a skull. It is also a very common motif in 15th- and 16th-century British portraiture.

A more direct comparison is with pictures of playful children or young men, who are often depicted looking at a skull as a sign of the transience of life. It was also a familiar motif in emblem books and tombs.

Hamlet meditating upon the skull of Yorick has become the most lasting embodiment of this idea, and has been depicted by later artists as a continuation of the Vanitas tradition.

The name Yorick has most often been interpreted as an attempt to render a Scandinavian forename: usually either "Erick" or "Jørg", a form of the name George. The name "Rorik" has also been suggested, since it appears in Saxo Grammaticus, one of Shakespeare's source texts, as the name of the queen's father. There has been no agreement about which name is most likely.