ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The skull of Yorick, the former jester of Hamlet’s late father, represents the inevitability of death and the existential meaninglessness of life in light of this fact.

Detailed explanation-2: -According to the plot of the play, Yorick was a jester at the king’s court. He was also well acquainted with the prince, Hamlet. They both played and enjoyed together in Hamlet’s childhood days. In the Hamlet skull scene, Hamlet holds Yorick’s skull and contemplates on the vanity of his own life.

Detailed explanation-3: -Yorick was the king’s jester: that is, the jester to King Hamlet, Prince Hamlet’s father, who is himself dead (murdered by Prince Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius). Yorick, being a jester, was ‘a fellow of infinite jest’ (a phrase David Foster Wallace co-opted for his famous novel, Infinite Jest), as we might expect.

Detailed explanation-4: -Who is Yorick? Yorick was the king’s jester, who Hamlet knew well as a child. Part of the quote is Hamlet saying that he remembers how funny Yorick was, and how he rode piggyback on Yorick’s back a thousand times.