Alas Poor Yorick

I thought this was Shakespeare so I did a Google search and confirmed. What I found is that the way we usually hear it is incorrect. You typically hear, “Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well. It actually reads;

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 rims 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?
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.

From the same page on my Google search, we get the interpretation of this famous speech. “Hamlet says this in a graveyard as he looks at the skull of Yorick, a court jester he had known as a child, and grieves for him. In this complex speech, which is one of the best known in all dramatic works, Hamlet goes on to consider the fate of us all when he compares the skull to those still living.”

Now I am not a big Shakespeare fan. I think he was creative but I do not enjoy the “Ye Olde English” speak or the meter and rhyme of the prose. He was the Andrew Lloyd Weber of his time with a string of theatrical hits that seemed to strike a chord with the audiences of the day. The question is will they be performing Cats 300 years from now.

Icool

Cobb