page_title: Yorick
section_title: Name
hierarchical_section_title: Yorick / Name
caption_attribution_description: An original pen and ink drawing from page 21 of Martin Rowson's graphic novel reworking of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. The page is Rowson's version of the 'black page' and this frame shows a gravestone marked ALAS POOR YORICK with a laughing ghost emerging and Shandy looking on in surprise.
context_page_description: Yorick is a character in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. He is the dead court jester whose skull is exhumed by the First Gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of the play. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a reminiscence by Prince Hamlet of the man, who apparently played a role during Hamlet’s upbringing:
  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?
  It is suggested that Shakespeare may have intended his audience to connect Yorick with the Elizabethan comedian Richard Tarlton, a celebrated performer of the pre-Shakespearian stage, who had died a decade or so before Hamlet was first performed.
context_section_description: The name Yorick has been interpreted as an attempt to render a Scandinavian forename: usually either "Eric" or "Jørg", a form of the name George. The name "Rorik" has also been suggested, since it appears in Saxo Grammaticus, one of Shakespeare's source texts, as the name of the queen's father. There has been no agreement about which name is most likely.
  Alternative suggestions include the ideas that it may be derived from the Viking name of the city of York (Jórvík), or that it is a near-anagram of the Greek word 'Kyrios' and thus a reference to the Catholic martyr Edmund Campion.
  The name was used by Laurence Sterne in his comic novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey as the surname of one of the characters, a parson who is a humorous portrait of the author. Parson Yorick is supposed to be descended from Shakespeare's Yorick.
caption: Alas poor Yorick - A humorous rendering of Laurence Sterne's Yorick by Martin Rowson in his graphic novel of  Tristram Shandy
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