Hamlet

Takes the skull

HAMLET Let me see.--Alas, poor Yorick!

I

knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most

excellent fancy172. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times -- and how abhorred my imagination is! My gorge173

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? No one now to mock your own jeering?177 Quite chop-fallen178? Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour179 she must come.

Make her laugh at that.-- Prithee, Horatio, tell me one

thing.

HORATIO What's that, my lord?

HAMLET Dost thou think Alexander183 looked o'this fashion i'th'earth?

HORATIO E'en so.

Places the skull on the ground or throws it down

HAMLET And smelt so? Puh!

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-hole190?

HORATIO 'Twere to consider too curiously191 to consider so.

HAMLET No, faith, not a jot, but to follow him thither with modesty193 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 loam195, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a

beer-barrel?

Imperial Caesar, dead and turned 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 flaw201!

But soft, but soft, aside: here comes the king.

Enter King, Queen, Laertes, [a Priest] and a coffin with Lords Attendant

The queen, the courtiers -- who is that they follow?