Yorick’s Ghost

by David P. Gontar (July 2014)

… and the fool shall look to the madman.   – Feste

1.  Introduction

Somewhere on the heath we lose him. In the Quarto version, the fool is last on stage when he is promoted to play magistrate in the three-judge panel of the mock trial of Goneril put on by the prosecutor, King Lear. (Sc. 13, 3.5, 31-75)

LEAR

I’ll see their trial first. Bring in the evidence.
[To Edgar] Thou robèd man of justice, take thy place;
[To Fool]  And thou, his yokefellow of equity,
Bench by his side. [To Kent] You are o’ th’ commission.
Sit you too.

EDGAR

Let us deal justly.
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
Thy sheep be in the corn,
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
Thy sheep shall take no harm.
Purr, the cat is grey.

LEAR

Arraign her first. ‘Tis Goneril. I here take my oath
before this honourable assembly she kicked the poor
King her father.

FOOL

Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?

LEAR

She cannot deny it.

FOOL

Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.
(Sc. 12 (3.5)  31-47)

OLIVIA

What’s a drunken man like, fool?

FESTE

Like a  drowned man, a fool and a madman — one
draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads
him, and the third drowns him.
(I, v, 126-128)

THESEUS

The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
 A local habitation and a name.
(V,  i, 7-17)

3.  Feste

FESTE

Good madonna, why mournest thou?

OLIVIA

Good fool, for my brother’s death.

FESTE

I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

OLIVIA

I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

FESTE

The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your
brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool,
gentlemen.
(I, v, 62-68)

SIR TOBY

Welcome, ass. Now let’s have a catch.

SIR ANDREW

By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast.
I had rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and
so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth,
thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when
thou spokest of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing
the equinoctial of Queubus. ‘Twas very goodn ‘faith. I
sent thee sixpence for thy leman. Hadst it?

FESTE

I did impeticos thy gratility; for Malvolio’s nose is
no whipstock. My lady has a white hand, and the
Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses.

SIR ANDREW

Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling, when
all is done. Now a song.
(II, iii, 17-27)

Later in the same Act, Feste sings for the obsessive lover Orsino, who hands him a coin.

ORSINO

There’s for thy pains.

FESTE

No pains, sir. I take pleasure in singing, sir.

ORSINO

I’ll pay thy pleasure then.

FESTE

Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or
another.

ORSINO
Give me now leave to leave thee.

FESTE
Now, the melancholy god protect thee, and the
tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy
mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy
put to sea, that their business might be everything,
and their intent everywhere, for that’s it that always
makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.
(II, iv, 66-77)

This parting exchange of Feste and Orsino is reminiscent of a something in Hamlet.

POLONIUS

How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness
that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could
not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and
suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him
and my daughter. — My lord, I will take my leave of you.

HAMLET

You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I
will more willingly part withal — except my life, my life,
my life.
(II, ii, 210-219)

MALVOLIO

I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though
ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say there was
never man thus abused. I am no more mad than you
are. Make the trial of it in any constant question.

FESTE

What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wildfowl?

MALVOLIO

That the soul of our grandam might haply
inhabit a bird.

FESTE

What thinkest thou of his opinion?

MALVOLIO

I think nobly of the soul, and in no way approve
his opinion.

FESTE

Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou
shalt hold th’ opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of
thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess
the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.
(IV, ii, 48-60)

* * *

FESTE

Master Malvolio?

MALVOLIO

Ay, good fool.

FESTE

Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?

MALVOLIO

Fool there was never man so notoriously
abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.

FESTE

But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be
no better in your wits than a fool.

MALVOLIO

They have here propertied me, keep me in
darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they
can to face me out of my wits.
(IV, ii, 86-95)

Feste is, of course, neither psychologist nor angel. Angered by his treatment at the hands of the household steward, he takes advantage of Malvolio’s captivity to torment him. No analysis of counter-transference here, just fuel for the fire. Feeling daily the sting of a role in which he is regarded as a thing ridiculous and of small account, Feste takes advantage of the opportunity to turn tables and subject Malvolio to the indignities of foolery. With pen and paper received from the fool, he sends an anguished appeal to his Lady, who releases him, and the sessions with Dr. Topas end without resolution.

4.  Yorick

HAMLET

Let me see.
He takes the skull
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
my imagination 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 chop-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.
(V, i, 179-190)

With hawk-like gaze, he would have seen that King Hamlet was being cuckolded by his own brother.  For the fool sees more than the sober-minded.

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons, and the time,
And, like the haggard, check at every feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man’s art,
For folly that he wisely shows is fit,
But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit.
(Twelfth Night, III, i, 59-67)

Here is what our dictionary says:

Antic

(American Heritage, 5th. ed., 77)

HAMLET

Whose grave’s this, sirrah?

FIRST CLOWN

Mine, sir.
(sings)
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For a guest is meet.

HAMLET

I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in’t.

FIRST CLOWN

You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not
yours. For my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.

HAMLET

Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say ’tis thine.
‘Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

FIRST CLOWN

‘Tis a quick lie, sir, ’twill away again from me to you.

HAMLET

What man dost thou dig it for?

FIRST CLOWN

For no man, sir.

HAMLET

What woman, then?

FIRST CLOWN

For none, neither.

HAMLET

Who is to be buried in’t?

FIRST CLOWN

One that was a woman, sir; but rest her
soul, she’s dead.

HAMLET

How absolute the knave is! We must speak by
the card, or equivocation will undo us.
(V, i, 115-134)

Of one thing we may be sure: Prince Hamlet is a skilled jester. His targets are the stodgy and self-deluded, even those who preach that to our own selves we must be true. (I, iii, 78)

POLONIUS

How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET

Well, God-‘a’-mercy.

POLONIUS

Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET

Excellent, excellent well. You’re a fishmonger.

POLONIUS

Not I, my lord.

HAMLET

Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS

Honest, my lord?

HAMLET

Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to
be one man picked out of ten thousand.

POLONIUS

That’s very true, my lord.

HAMLET

For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being
a good kissing carrion — have you a daughter?

POLONIUS

I have, my lord.

HAMLET

Let her not walk i’th’ sun. Conception is a
blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to’t.

POLONIUS

(aside) How say you that? Still harping on
my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first — a said I
was a fishmonger. A is far gone, far gone, and truly,
in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very
near this. I’ll speak to him again — What do you read,
my lord?

HAMLET

Words, words, words.

POLONIUS

What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET

Between who?

POLONIUS

I mean the matter you read, my lord.

HAMLET

Slanders, sir; for the satirical slave says here that
old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled,
their eyes purging thick amber, or plum-tree gum, and
that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with
most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most
powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty
to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should
be as old as I am — if, like a crab, you could go backward.

POLONIUS

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
(II, ii, 173-207)

In Act Three, Sc. two, Hamlet, Claudius and Polonius discuss the expected theatrical performance.

KING CLAUDIUS

How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET

Excellent, i’faith, of the the chameleon’s dish. I eat
the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.

KING CLAUDIUS

I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet.
These words are not mine.

HAMLET

No, nor mine, now. (To Polonius) My lord, you
played once i’th’ university, you say.

POLONIUS

That I did, my lord, and was accounted a good
actor.

HAMLET

And what did you enact?

POLONIUS

I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’
Capitol. Brutus killed me.

HAMLET

It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf
there.
(III, ii, 90-102)

It is interesting to note, by the way,  that the court of King Claudius, unlike that of his late brother, has no appointed fool. None is of record following the death of Yorick. Thus, as Nature abhors a vacuum, so Hamlet steps into the vacancy of folly.

Two more examples will suffice.

OPHELIA

You are merry, my lord.

HAMLET

Who, I?

OPHELIA

Ay, my lord.

HAMLET

O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man
do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my
mother looks, and my father died within’s two hours.

OPHELIA

Nay, ’tis twice two months, my lord.

HAMLET

So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for
I’ll have a suit of sables. O, heavens, die two months
ago and not forgotten yet! Then there’s hope a great
man’s memory may outlive his life half a year. But
by’r Lady, a must build churches then, or else shall a
suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose
epitaph is, ‘For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot.
(III, ii, 119-129)

Then we find this vaudeville routine, with Claudius assigned the role of straight man.

KING CLAUDIUS

Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

HAMLET

At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS

At supper? Where?

HAMLET

Not where he eats but where a is eaten. A certain
convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. You worm
is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to
fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king
and your lean beggar is but variable service — two dishes,
but to one table. That’s the end.

KING CLAUDIUS

Alas, alas!

HAMLET

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of
a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS

What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET

Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING CLAUDIUS

Where is Polonius?

HAMLET

In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger
find him not there, seek him i’th’ other place yourself.
But indeed, if you find him not this month, you shall
nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
(IV, iii, 17-36)

One is tempted to ask after all this, Was Prince Hamlet majoring in Foolish Arts in Wittenberg? What is the efficient cause of his irony, his droll style constantly slipping into the meaningful nonsense of madness?

 WORKS CITED:

David P. Gontar, Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review, 2013

William Shakespeare The Complete Works, S. Wells, G. Taylor, eds., Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2005

William Shakespeare Complete Works,  J. Bate, E. Rasmussen, eds., The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2007

 

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