HAMLET

A prince, handed the skull of a man who once carried him as a child, discovers that all wit and beauty come to the same dirt. Grief cools into something almost peaceful.

1:00Dramatic-comic20s–30sIntermediate

The speech92 words · 3 beats

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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?turn

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. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

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Speaking to: Horatio, beside him at the grave, and the skull itself.
What just happened: In a churchyard, a gravedigger has tossed up a skull and named it: Yorick, the old court jester. Hamlet takes the skull in his hands and recognizes it.
Objective: To make the fact of universal death sit still long enough to look at it.
The turn: 'Where be your gibes now?' — fond memory tips into the cold arithmetic of decay.
Watch out for: The trap is lugubrious graveyard gloom. It opens warm, even funny, with real love for Yorick; the chill arrives mid-thought. 'Now get you to my lady's chamber' is a bitter joke, not a moan. Keep it conversational to Horatio.

Full work: Hamlet New to the vocabulary? What’s a beat? →

More from Hamlet1

HAMLET1:18A prince who has proven he can think his way around anything now tests whether thought is worth the trouble of living. He reasons toward suicide and talks himself out of it by accident.

HAMLET

Hamlet · William Shakespeare · 1:00 · 92 words

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? 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. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

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