Page 77
First Clown:
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! A pour’d a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.
Hamlet:
This?
First Clown:
E’en that.
Hamlet:
Let me see. (Takes the skull.) 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 kiss’d 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? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chop-fallen? 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.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.
Horatio:
What’s that, my lord?
Hamlet:
Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ th’earth?
Horatio:
E’en so.
Hamlet:
And smelt so? Pah!
(Throws down the skull.)
Horatio:
E’en so, my lord.
Hamlet:
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
Horatio:
’Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.
Hamlet:
No, faith, not a jot. But to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into 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 turn’d 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 winter’s flaw.
But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King.
Enter priests, etc, in procession; the corpse of Ophelia, Laertes and Mourners following; King, Queen, their Trains, etc.
The Queen, the courtiers. Who is that they follow?
And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken
The corse they follow did with desperate hand
Fordo it own life. ’Twas of some estate.
Couch we awhile and mark.
(Retiring with Horatio.)
Laertes:
What ceremony else?
Hamlet:
That is Laertes, a very noble youth. Mark.