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Fortinbras
The deceased royal jester, whose remains Hamlet cradles and plays with after a pair of gravediggers exhume his skull. Hamlet recalls Yorick, in one of the play’s most famous lines, as “a fellow of infinite jest,” and yet the prince’s macabre handling of the remains of the jester of his youth reflects the play’s darker themes of poison, corruption, and death.
Yorick Quotes in Hamlet
The Hamlet quotes below are all either spoken by Yorick or refer to Yorick. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 5, Scene 1 Quotes
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest… Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
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As Hamlet speaks to the gravediggers, he comes across a skull and learns it is from the court jester Yorick. This shock causes Hamlet to wonder about the distance between Yorick’s behavior in life and his current decaying state. This passage mixes Hamlet’s characteristic philosophical rumination with an intense dark humor. He offers a series of apostrophe-questions addressed to Yorick, which only point out how the dead man will remain ever unable to respond. And the jocular disposition of Yorick reiterates the lack of humor in the current situation. Thus Hamlet is able to take a positive set of terms—“jest,” Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum vol
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Yorick Character Timeline in Hamlet
The timeline below shows where the character Yorick appears in Hamlet. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 5, Scene 1
...who the skull belonged to, and the gravedigger answers that it was the skull of Yorick, the king’s jester. Hamlet picks up the skull and examines it more closely, then cries...
(full context)
...asks Horatio if he thinks even Alexander the Great came to look—and smell—like the poor Yorick after being buried, and Horatio says that he probably did. “To what base uses we...
(full context)
