Alas, Poor Yorick

SHAKEPEARE'S HAMLET Excerpt from Hamlet Act V, scene I FIRST CLOWN Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years. HAMLET Whose was it? FIRST CLOWN A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was? HAMLET Nay, I know not. FIRST CLOWN A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'a poured 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 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? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen?