Shakespeare's Fools - Yorick in Hamlet Shakespeare's Fools: Yorick in Hamlet From The Fools of Shakespeare by Frederick Warde. London: McBride, Nast & company. "The King's Jester" Hamlet, a young Danish prince, accompanied by his friend Horatio, stands by a low wall that encloses a graveyard watching an old sexton who is digging a grave. With professional unconcern the old fellow shovels out the earth, together with some human bones; amongst them two skulls, one of which he strikes smartly with his spade to imbed it in the soft earth, and prevent its rolling away. Shocked at the apparent indifference of the old man to these dead relics, the prince advances, interrupts his work, and engages him in conversation. The grave-digger is a quaint, independent old fellow, and answers the prince's questions with humorous bluntness.

The prince inquires, "How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?" After replying to the question, the sexton picks up one of the skulls from the mound of earth and asserts, "This skull hath lain i' the earth three-and-twenty years." "Whose was it" asks the prince. "A whoreson mad fellow's it was," replies the sexton, and then adds, "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." Gently taking the grim remainder from the irreverent hands of the old grave-digger, and gazing at it with loving tenderness, the prince exclaims: "Alas, poor Yorick I - 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 I 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 in a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning! quite chap-fallen!" For three-and-twenty years that skull had lain in the earth, till every vestige of its personality had been destroyed, and only the experienced eye of the old sexton could recognize it. A chapless skull! dust and bones tossed up from the decaying earth from which they sprang, and to which, by the inexorable law of nature, they had returned; a skull that once was covered with skin and tissues, through which ran a myriad of arteries and veins, conveying the blood to and from the active brain that lay in the now empty shell. A skull that had crowned a frame, clothed like itself, intersected with nerves that connected the sensations of heart and brain, and canals that carried the vital fluids on their ceaseless course, giving the entire structure a living entity, and an individual personality; the personality of Yorick, jester to the court of Hamlet, King of Denmark. Yorick! what a merry, loving soul he must have been, how full of fun and frolic.

What pranks he must have played on those big, good-natured, long-haired Viking warriors, as they sat at the banquet table in the great hall of the castle of Elsinore. In fancy, I can hear their laughter at his madcap jests, and the deep roar of their voices as they join in the chorus of his merry songs. I can see him in the churchyard, serious for a moment, sitting on an ancient tombstone, gravely watching the old sexton digging "a pit of clay"; the last resting place of folly and wisdom; but his fun-loving soul cannot long be restrained by even such solemn environment; so, furtively, the mad rogue purloins the bibulous old grave digger's flagon of Rhenish, standing near-by, and pours its contents over the head of the discomfited sexton; then, fleet as a deer he runs away, leaps the churchyard wall, and the faint echo of his merry laughter is the only solace for the old man's wrath. Yorick!

the lines are few, and the description brief that Shakespeare has given us of the man, but they are so pregnant with suggestion, so sweet in thought, and so tender in memory that he lives in our minds as completely as though he gamboled on the earth again, and laughingly jingled his cap and bells in our very ears. How happy must have been those early days at Elsinore, when Hamlet was a child and Yorick his play-fellow. How they must have romped together in the gardens. What fun it was for the little prince to climb upon the jester's shoulders and race pick-back along the terraces, the boy's long fair curls blowing in the wind, and his merry laughter filling the air with music. How pleasant to sit in the shade of one of the big old trees in the park, and listen to the jester tell such interesting tales of the folklore of the country; of the traditions of the prince's warlike race, and the mighty deeds of his great Viking ancestors.

Then there were stories, too, wonderful stories, of goblins, sprites and fairies who did such strange things that the relation of them almost frightens the little prince; but he is reassured by a smile, and, twining his arms round dear old Yorick's neck, and kissing the jester's lips, he nestles close to the breast of his motley friend in confident security. Three-and-twenty years have passed since then; years of sorrow, years of pain I The prince is now a man, with more than a man's share of doubts, perplexities and cares: and yet at the sight of the bare, chapless skull of his dead play-fellow all the sweet and tender past comes back again. What a tender pathos is mingled with the prince's philosophic reflections on the remains of his dead friend, as memory recalls each word and incident. It is indeed a reflex of Yorick himself, as the prince utters the grim jest, "Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come." So must we all!

The king lies in his marble sepulcher, the jester in his humble grave in the churchyard: but the ermine robe and motley coat, the crown and bauble will mingle their dust, and find equality in the universal democracy of death. How to cite this article: Warde, Frederick. The Fools of Shakespeare. London: McBride, Nast & company, 1915. Shakespeare Online. 2 Aug. 2011. (date when you accessed the information) < >. _________ Hamlet: The Character Hamlet: The Character HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE: Jones, Baudelaire. "Hamlet: The Character." Hamlet Prince of Denmark. 2 May, 2012. < The protagonist of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, and perhaps the grandest creation of his unparalleled genius, Hamlet has stymied critics for centuries with the complexity and apparent contradictions of his enigmatic character. Is he mentally unstable, as some critics believe, a suicidal youth driven to the brink of madness by the foul revelations of his ghostly father -- or is he merely "mad in craft" as he himself suggests in the interview with his mother?

Is he a habitual procrastinator incapable of any meaningful action -- or a brash and sadistic spirit of vengeance who reigns in his impulsive nature, delays his vengeance until a moment when Claudius, caught in an act that "has no relish of salvation in't," will pay the steepest price for his transgressions? Trickster or philosopher? Dreamer or realist? Lovesick puppy or callous manipulator? Pawn of the Devil or Heaven's divine scourge and minister? The list of questions is almost endless, and no two scholars seem to agree precisely on the same set of answers. Inscrutable as the Sphinx, Hamlet guards his secrets jealously, presents a riddle that not only his fellow dramatis personae, but also playgoers for centuries have been unable to crack.

He is the beloved prince of Denmark, that much is certain, popular with the general population "who, dipping all his faults in their affection, would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, convert his gyves to graces." He is the son of the late King Hamlet and reigning Queen Gertrude, and nephew to the usurper, King Claudius, but beyond this few critics seem capable of any consensus. One authority compiles a list of the prince's inconsistencies: Hamlet, as a character, was notorious as an example of the union of the most incompatible qualities: impetuous, tho' philosophical; sensible of injury, yet timid of resentment; shrewd, yet void of policy; full of filial piety, yet tame under oppression; boastful in expression, undetermined in action ... [ 1 ] Another refers to Hamlet as: ...

a sort of double person; one which, covered with the darkness of its imagination, looks not forth into the world, nor takes any concern in vulgar objects or frivolous pursuits; another, which he lends, as it were, to ordinary men, which can accommodate itself to their tempers and manners, and indulge, without feeling any degradation from the indulgence, a smile with the cheerful, and a laugh with the giddy. [ 2 ] This second analysis implies a certain insincerity in the young prince, as if he connivingly employs a different mask for each encounter, choosing a character as one might choose a necktie, to suit the occasion. There may be some truth to this analogy, but it does not necessarily brand him as a conscious schemer, for we all show a different face from time to time, and such subtle shifts in character are not always consciously deployed. Hamlet, however, wears so many different masks, some of them necessarily false, and changes his disguise so frequently, that his true nature, not to mention his intent from moment to moment, is sometimes difficult to decipher. In the company of King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, he is a brooding youth, unbalanced by the death of his father.

In the presence of Horatio, he transforms into a warm, if still troubled, friend. Alone with the ghost, he swears himself the avenger of injustice who "with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love" will sweep to his revenge. With Polonius he degenerates into a trader of shallow witticisms, with Ophelia the frustrated (and then abusive) lover, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a paranoid schizophrenic and conspiracy theorist, with Laertes an over-competetive swordsman, with the players a theatre enthusiast, and so on and so forth until the end of the play when he lays dying and bemoans his "wounded name, things standing thus unknown." He begs Horatio to straighten it all out (no small task!), but he has presumably revealed all to his conspirator offstage, and Horatio promises, in the final moments of the play, to "speak to th' yet unknowing world how these things came about." Of course, the audience isn't privy to Horatio's clarifying account, so we are left to our own devices in deciphering the true nature of the prince's character.

Who then is the real Hamlet? Which incarnation is closest to his true self? Is he most sincere in the opening scenes of the play, before he learns of the ghost's existence? Or is he already suffering the effects of severe (and character-distorting) depression? Is his true self only seen through the eyes of Ophelia who relates his many tender affections? Or does he reveal himself only in the final moments when he leaps the last hurdle and executes his uncle? Even so-called experts find it difficult to pinpoint with any accuracy when the prince's true character peeks from behind the mask and when he is merely performing a role to obtain some advantage. There are theories, to be sure. Many and varied. In the famous soliloquy, for instance, is the young prince truly suicidal, or is he putting on a show for the two plotters, Claudius and Polonius, who he knows to be hidden nearby. Shakespeare's stage directions offer little insight into the matter.

Wolfgang Clemen views the soliloquies as a window into Hamlet's hidden soul: In the soliloquies it becomes apparent that Hamlet is fighting not only against the world around him but also against the overpowering strength of his own emotions, against the antagonism of his own heart. [ 3 ] Francis Albert Marshall concurs: The audience should be made to feel that they are really watching the workings of a human mind crushed under the burden of a life from which all joy, and hope, and peace, have departed; of one tempted to seize the terribly easy escape from such a life which self-destruction offers. [ 4 ] But David Ball sees something very different in the Rorschach test of Hamlet's words: Don't mistake 'To be or not to be' for an action-interrupting digression on suicide. Structural investigation of stasis and intrusion shows it is not. Why would Hamlet, generally acknowledged as Shakespeare's most intelligent character, stupidly refer to death as "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns"? Can Hamlet have forgotten whom he saw in act 1, scene 5?...

If Hamlet knows he has been sent for, and if he knows Polonius is a master spy ... then indeed this most famous of soliloquies is no soliloquy. It is a maneuver by Hamlet, who knows he is being overheard by the folks who have sent for him, a maneuver aimed at Claudius to help Hamlet regain stasis in a world that went topsy-turvy ... when the ghost revealed how rotten things were in the state of Denmark. [ 5 ] Like many questions raised by the enigmatic nature of Hamlet's character, no definitive ruling is possible on the problem of the soliloques -- though there are staunch advocates on both sides of the argument. Hamlet refuses to reveal himself entirely even to his closest ally, Horatio, until the final act of the play when, after finally taking his schoolfellow into his confidence, he charges him to "report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied." [ V. ii. ] Throughout the play, Hamlet seems to struggle with the logistics of avenging his father's death, stumbling at times, at other moments finding his way. We are sometimes aware of his tactics. On other occasions, perhaps, we are not.

As the climax of the play approaches, he seems to give his purpose up to Providence, saying to Horatio: There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. [V. ii.] Does Hamlet mean to imply that men are no more than leaves in the wind--that, if his vengeance is just, some unseen divinity will give the King into his hands without any great effort on his part? Although circumstances bear this theory out, it is doubtful whether Hamlet's methodical brain at any time gives up his hopes entirely to Fate. He knows his time is running short. It will soon be known from England what devilry he has played on the unsuspecting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he acknowledges to Horatio that: The interim is mine. [V. ii.] Allowances must be made, however, for Hamlet's seeming inaction in this and other portions of the play. He is not judged fairly by critics who suggest that his task is as simple as charging into the king's chamber and running him through with a sword. Hamlet is not a blunt instrument. He is a fine foil, and, as such, must drive his point home with precision to be effective.

He has been charged by the ghost not only with vengeance, but with certain conditions, provisions and addendums. He must not contrive against his mother, for instance, and he must not taint his own mind by the course of events. There are also political ramifications to consider. If he is unable to present evidence to justify the assassination of Claudius, his murder may throw Denmark into chaos, leaving the country unstable and vulnerable to an attack from an aggressor such as Fortinbras of Norway who has already made some noise by demanding the surrender of certain lands that were lost by his own father in a previous war. As the play progresses, Hamlet's hand is stayed by one consideration after another, a false step here, a missed opportunity there, but he seems to lay the groundwork, biding his time and moving ever closer to his purpose. Even within the play, there is some debate as to the efficacy of Hamlet's intrigues and devices. The impatient ghost appears to him during the interview with his mother to whet his "almost blunted purpose," and yet Hamlet's machinations have already been sufficient to strike fear in the heart of Claudius.

Even prior to the murder of Polonius, the king has made arrangements to dispatch Hamlet to England so that The terms of our estate may not endure Hazard so near's as doth hourly grow Out of his brows. [ III. iii. ] After escaping his escort (a bold move that thwarts the execution Claudius has planned for him in England), Hamlet returns to Denmark even more aimless (apparently) than before. He seems to have lost all urgency, claims to be no more than a pawn of Fate, is drawn easily into the duel with Laertes. In light of all this, it is tempting to pass judgment on him as a fatally flawed hero, but as one critic cautions: "What's the matter with Hamlet?" is a tempting question to ask when we seek solutions or a cure. But when we ask it, we keep uneasy company with Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. [ 6 ] By accepting the challenge of Laertes, does Hamlet not arm himself with a deadly weapon in the presence of the very king he hopes to assassinate? Would a lesser man have managed this?

Would a less courageous man have escaped Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and braved the company of pirates to put himself in this position? Would a less crafty man, even if he managed by some guile to escape his escort, have returned raging, thus putting the king on notice and telegraphing his intentions? Hamlet himself almost seems to censure those who would reduce him to more easily comprehensible dimensions when he says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. [III, ii.] Throughout the play he struggles with weighty questions -- whether, and in what manner, to avenge his father's murder -- and wrestles with his own sanity along the way.

Michael Payne notes: Hamlet is not a collection of symptoms of one or more mental diseases, nor is he an intellectual problem to be solved. He is, however, surrounded by those who would, if they could, reduce him to a collection of symptoms or to a problem. [ 7 ] And George Morris Cohen Brandes, in a more poetic description, proclaims: He is the cry of humanity horror struck at its own visage. [ 8 ] Perhaps the most straightforward view sees Hamlet as seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father, but may just as easily be some devil who leads him on to eternal damnation. The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind." Yet Hamlet's contradictions are not so difficult to understand. We are all guilty of wearing different masks in different situations.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare delineates "the passions and affectations of the human mind, as they exist in reality, with all the various colourings which they receive in the mixed scenes of life; not as they are accommodated by the hands of more artificial poets, to one great undivided impression, or an uninterrupted chain of congenial events." [ 9 ] On the stage, we are accustomed perhaps to more consistency of character, something less human and more easily understood, but Shakespeare was not a common dramatist and refused to condemn the greatest of his creations to such shallow dimensions. Hamlet's Age The debate is not limited to such abstract notions as the nature of Hamlet's character. Even his age is subject to interpretation. Valdemar Osterberg, the most learned Danish Shakespeare philologist of his day, devotes an entire book to the subject! [ 10 ] At first glance, Hamlet's age seems obvious.

In Act V, scene i, the prince asks the First Gravedigger how long he has "been a grave-maker," and he replies that he took up his current profession on "the very day that young Hamlet was born--he that is mad and sent into England." Furthermore, he goes on to say that he has "been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." This exchange would seem to set Hamlet's age firmly at thirty years, a theory bolstered by the fact that Richard Burbage, who originally played the role of Hamlet, was thirty-two at the time of the play's premiere. Elsewhere in the same scene, the gravedigger produces the skull of Yorick, the king's jester, who "hath lain i' th' earth three and twenty years." Hamlet recalls this same jester from his childhood and exclaims, "I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times." If Hamlet is thirty, and Yorick has been dead for twenty-three years, the prince would have been no more than seven when he last rode on the jester's back. A reasonably consistent timeline.

A case can be made, however, for a much younger Hamlet -- as young, perhaps, as sixteen. Perhaps the most commonly quoted evidence for a teenage Hamlet is the fact that the line referring to the length of the gravedigger's career is omitted from the First Quarto, and, in that text, Yorick is reported to have been in the ground only twelve years. As Marvin Rosenberg notes: This would knock eleven years off Hamlet's age. Champions of a young Hamlet seize on this; but the presumed "reporter" of that "bad" quarto mixed up other numbers, so this must be generally considered only an interesting sidebar. [ 11 ] There is other evidence, however, to be considered. Take, for instance, the fact of Hamlet's enrollment at the University of Wittenberg. As a rule, the nobility did not attend university past the age of twenty, much less thirty. In addition, a 30-year-old Prince Hamlet would have been of ruling age, which raises the question of why it was not he, rather than his uncle, who succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father, especially given his noted popularity with the people.

Furthermore, in Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques, generally considered the source of Shakespeare's story, Amleth has "not attained to man's estate." Howard Furness, often referred to as the leading authority on this matter, sums the matter thus: I look on it as certain, that when Shakespeare began the play he conceived Hamlet as quite a young man. But as the play grew, as greater weight of reflection, of insight into character, of knowledge of life, &c., were wanted, Shakespeare necessarily and naturally made Hamlet a formed man; and, by the time that he got to the Grave-digger's scene, told us the Prince was 30 -- the right age for him then; but not his age when Laertes and Polonius warned Ophelia against his blood that burned, his youthful fancy for her -- "a toy in blood" -- &c. [ 12 ] Ultimately, the age problem is of little importance to audiences who quite naturally accept the Prince's age to be that of his impersonator on the stage. Hamlet's Name Even Hamlet's name is the center of some controversy.

Although the name Hamlet can be traced as far back as the 10th century and is easily derived from the "Hamblet" of Belleforest's story and the "Amleth" of Saxo Grammaticus' Danish history, still the striking similarity to the name of Shakespeare's only son cannot be ignored. Hamnet Shakespeare (baptised 2 February 1585 – buried 11 August 1596) died at age 11 of unknown causes, and scholars have long speculated that the dramatist's work may have been influenced by this tragic event. While many critics point out that Hamlet has a Scandinavian origin and was likely chosen as a play subject for commercial reasons, taking as its basis an earlier box office success often referred to as the Ur-Hamlet (possibly written by Thomas Kydd), still Shakespeare's grief over the loss of his only son may lie at the heart of the tragedy. Attempting to justify this theory, one critic writes: Hamlet marks a sufficient break in Shakespeare’s career as to suggest some more personal cause for his daring transformation both of his sources and of his whole way of writing.

A simple index of this transformation is the astonishing rush of new words, words that he had never used before in some twenty-one plays and in two long poems. There are, scholars have calculated, more than six hundred of these words, many of them not only new to Shakespeare but also—compulsive, fanged, besmirch, intruding, overgrowth, pander, outbreak, unfledged, unimproved, unnerved, unpolluted, unweeded, to name only a few—new to the written record of the English language. Something must have been at work in Shakespeare, something powerful enough to call forth this linguistic explosion. As audiences and readers have long instinctively understood, passionate grief, provoked by the death of a loved one, lies at the heart of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Even if the decision to redo the old tragedy of Hamlet had come to Shakespeare from strictly commercial considerations, the coincidence of the names—the writing again and again of the name of his dead son as he composed the play—may have reopened a deep wound, a wound that had never properly healed.

[ 13 ] This same grief, perhaps, echoes also in one of the most painful passages Shakespeare ever wrote, in the final pages of King Lear when the ruined monarch realizes that his daughter is dead: No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Hamlet's Soliloquies One of the most interesting features of the play, and one of the most challenging for those wishing to impersonate the prince onstage, Hamlet's soliloquies have sometimes been omitted in an ill-advised attempt to make the hero "do more and think less." Today, however, most critics would agree that the soliloquies are integral to our understanding of the play. The most famous of Hamlet's soliloquies, those that have tended both to become set pieces and to dominate critical discussion, differ radically from his speech in dialogue. Whereas his conversation normally reflects the doubleness of meaning characteristic of wit, his soliloquies characteristically single-minded expressions of emotion.

Rather than presenting the full range of Hamlet's response to his dilemma, they tend to express moods of grief, despair, self-reproach, even malice. [ 14 ] According to this interpretation, the soliloquies serve as a sort of window into Hamlet's soul, allowing the audience to more easily follow his emotional course, but not all critics accept this simple purpose. Although Hamlet's soliloquies give expression to his inner conflict they also reflect the world and the people around him. Hamlet's father, his mother, Claudius, make their presence felt, and they come alive in the imagination.... Thus the term "introspective" which is often used to describe the essence of the soliloquies is not entirely adequate. What Hamlet has just seen or experienced is shaped in the soliloquies into recollections, admonishments or mental confrontations with counterfigures against whom he tries to match himself. [ 15 ] As this critic implies, the soliloquies may be the secret key to a sort of inner play that takes place within Hamlet's own mind.

"The process of playing roles is infinite," Northrop Frye writes in Divisions on a Ground, "and, as Hamlet's soliloquies demonstrate, we keep on dramatizing ourselves to ourselves." Further Reading on Hamlet "The Emergence of Character Criticism" by Brian Vickers. Shakespeare Survey, Volume 34. Cambridge University Press, 1981. Henry Mackenzie. The Mirror. No. 100. Saturday, April 22, 1780. Shakespeare's Soliloquies. Wolfgang Clemen. New York: Methuen & Co., 1987. A Study of Hamlet. Francis Albert Marshall. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1875. Backwards and Forwards. David Ball. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. "What's the Matter with Hamlet?" Michael Payne. Perspectives on Hamlet. New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 1975. Ibid. William Shakespeare. Georg Morris Cohen Brandes. London: William Heinemann, 1898. Henry Mackenzie. The Mirror. No. 100.

Saturday, April 22, 1780. Prince Hamlet's Age. Valdemar Osterberg. Copenhagen: Høst & Søn, 1924. The Masks of Hamlet. Marvin Rosenberg. Cranbury: University of Delaware Press, 1992. Hamlet. Ed. Howard Furness. Philidelphia: J. B. Lippencott, 1877. Greenblatt, Stephen. "The Death of Hamnet and the Making of Hamlet". N.Y. Review of Books 51.16 (Oct. 21, 2004). Some Necessary Questions of the Play. Robert E. Wood. Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1994. Shakespeare's Soliloquies. Ingeborg Boltz. London: Methuen & Co., 1987. Hamlet Summary ACT I, scene i Doubting the tales of a ghost that has twice visited them, Horatio joins Marcellus and the other guards on their midnight watch to verify or disprove their strange story.

Not only does Horatio see the ghost when it appears, but he notes that it resembles the king of Denmark who has recently been buried and resolves to inform Hamlet, the king's son, of the ghost's appearance. ACT I, scene ii Judging Hamlet's mourning for his father to be excessive, King Claudius (Hamlet's uncle) and Queen Gertrude (Hamlet's mother) appeal to the prince to "throw to earth this unprevailing woe." Hamlet humors them by agreeing to stay at the castle rather than returning to Wittenberg, but he remains melancholy. Left alone, however, Hamlet rages. He's angry at his mother for remarrying only two months after his father's death. Horatio and the guards arrive with news of the ghost, and Hamlet decides to accompany them on their next watch to see for himself. ACT I, scene iii As Laertes prepares to embark for France, he warns his sister, Ophelia, not to get romantically involved with Prince Hamlet who, being heir to the throne, is not free to marry a mere courtier.

Their father, Polonius, arrives and offers his departing son a few words of wisdom before seconding his opinion regarding the prince. ACT I, scene v The ghost reveals itself as Hamlet's father and urges him to avenge its "foul and most unnatural murder" -- unnatural because he was poisoned in his sleep by his own brother, Claudius who now wears the crown. After the ghost vanishes, Hamlet swears Horatio and Marcellus to silence. ACT II, scene i Polonius instructs his servant Reynaldo to follow Laertes to Paris and inquire of his behavior there. Ophelia enters, frightened, and tells Polonius of a mad encounter she has just had with Hamlet who burst into her closet unannounced and pale and looking as if he had been "loosed out of hell." Though Hamlet said nothing, only staring at the poor girl before retreating with an agonized sigh that "did seem to shatter all his bulk," Polonius interprets this strange behavior as a sign of true love for his daughter and decides to inform Claudius.

ACT II, scene ii King Claudius and Queen Gertrude entreat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's schoolmates that they have sent for, to help them discover what weighs so heavily on the prince's mind. Two ambassadors have returned from Norway and report that a potential confrontation with Fortinbras, the prince of that country, has been peaceably resolved. Claudius agrees to give the Norwegian army safe passage through Denmark for a campaign they plan to wage over some disputed land. Polonius claims to have discovered the "cause of Hamlet's lunacy" and presents to the King and Queen love letters that Hamlet has written to Ophelia. Hoping that Hamlet is merely lovesick, and this the cause of his violent mood swings, they decide to arrange some encounter between Hamlet and Ophelia in order to test the theory. Meanwhile, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern present themselves to Hamlet and attempt to discover what afflicts him, but he percieves in their questions and unexpected arrival in Elsinore some deception and refuses to reveal the true reason for his strange behavior.

A group of traveling players arrives at the castle, and Hamlet requests a monologue of one of the players who performs it to the point of tears. Hamlet asks the players to perform "The Murder of Gonzago" and to insert a speech he has written. They readily agree. Alone, Hamlet chastises himself for not more passionately pursuing revenge for his father's murder. He wishes to be more like the player who worked himself to tears over the death of a fictional character. He plans to test the King's conscience by having the players play something like the murder of his father. "If he but blench," Hamlet says, "I know my course." ACT III, scene i Rosencrantz and Guildenstern report to the King and Queen that they have been unable to determine the cause of Hamlet's lunacy. Claudius and Polonius hide behind a curtain, hoping to observe Hamlet wooing Ophelia, but the prince, perhaps realizing that he is being watched, denies that he has ever sent her any letters. Ophelia laments his apparent madness.

ACT III, scene ii After instructing the players on how best to perform the play he has written for them, Hamlet lets Horatio in on his plan. He asks his friend to watch the king's face carefully during the performance and mark whether he looks guilty when the players reenact the murder of his father as described by the ghost. During the play, when the Player King is poisoned, Claudius rises and, calling for light, rushes out of the theatre. Hamlet and Horatio confer, and both agree that the king did indeed betray his guilt. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform Hamlet that the queen wishes to speak with him in her closet. They press him again for the cause of his "distemper," and he chastises them for trying to play him like a pipe. ACT III, scene iii Fearing that he has been discovered, Claudius orders Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort Hamlet immediately to England. Alone, the king prays for forgiveness for his brother's murder.

Hamlet overhears this, but chooses not to kill Claudius until he is about some act that "has no relish of salvation in't." ACT III, scene iv Polonius hides in Gertrude's chamber in order to overhear her interview with Hamlet. When the prince hears a noise behind the curtain, he assumes it is Claudius hiding there and runs Polonius through with his sword, killing the old courtier instantly. Gertrude is shocked at this "rash and bloody deed", but Hamlet is furious at the queen for her complicity in his uncle's theft of the kingdom and rebukes her for coupling with such a villain, reviling her until she begs him to speak no more. The ghost appears to whet Hamlet's "almost blunted purpose" and urges him to console his mother, but Gertrude cannot see the ghost and thinks Hamlet has gone mad. Advising her not to be tempted again into his uncle's bed, Hamlet drags the corpse of Polonius from the room.

ACT IV, scene iv Escorted by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet speaks to a captain of the Norwegian army as it marches, under Fortinbras' command, across Denmark to battle Poland over "a little patch of ground." Inspired by the boldness of Fortinbras, Hamlet swears, "O, from this time forth/My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!" ACT IV, scene v Ophelia seeks an audience with the queen. She appears to have gone mad at the news of Polonius' death. Laertes, having returned from Paris after learning that Hamlet has slain his father, storms the castle with a group of armed followers and demands justice. ACT IV, scene vii A messenger informs Claudius of Hamlet's return. The king and Laertes plot against Hamlet, hoping to draw him into a fencing match in which Laertes will be armed with a poisoned rapier. As a backup plan, if Laertes fails to deliver a fatal wound, Claudius will give Hamlet a poisoned cup from which to drink during the match. Gertrude interrupts their plotting with the news that Ophelia, in her madness, has fallen into a stream and drowned.

ACT V, scene i In a churchyard, Hamlet and Horatio find two gravediggers preparing a grave. When Hamlet asks who the grave is for, the first gravedigger tells him only that it is for "one that was a woman." As he clears the ground, the gravedigger produces a skull from the earth that he identifies as Yorick, the king's jester who has been dead for 23 years. Hamlet tells Horatio that he knew the man and used to ride on his back as a child. The King and Queen and Laertes appear with attendants carrying the corpse of Ophelia, but the priest refuses to perform a full ceremony because her death is considered a suicide. Laertes berates the priest and leaps into his sister's grave to hold her one last time. Hamlet, grief stricken at the news of Ophelia's death, leaps into the grave as well. Furious at the sight of his father's murderer, Laertes grapples with Hamlet who claims that "Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum." Hamlet and Laertes are separated, and Claudius urges Laertes to to be patient.

ACT V, scene ii Hamlet explains to Horatio how he learned of the king's treachery. After sneaking into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's cabin and unsealing the king's official commission, he had read the decree and discovered that he was to be beheaded when they reached England. He then forged a new commission instructing instead that the bearers of the letter (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) be put to death and sealed it with his father's signet ring. As he relates this story, a courtier appears to inform Hamlet that the king has laid a wager on him, betting that the prince will not lose by more than three hits in a fencing match with Laertes. Hamlet accepts the challenge, promising to win for the king if he can. During the match, Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned rapier, but they change weapons in a scuffle and Laertes is wounded with the poisoned rapier as well. Drinking from the poisoned cup that Claudius has prepared for Hamlet, Gertrude swoons and dies.

Hamlet orders that the doors be locked until the treachery is discovered, and Laertes admits the whole plan to Hamlet before dying. Hamlet kills the king and afterwards dies himself, overcome by the poison. With his last breath, he begs Horatio to "report his cause aright to the unsatisfied." Fortinbras, next in line for the throne, arrives and orders his soldiers to bear Hamlet away. END OF PLAY

Question: What was the name of the late King’s jester in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’?
Answer: Yorick