ABSTRACT
Yorick, Ham 5.1.176, 180, jester who played with Hamlet when the prince was a child. Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick is the most famous image of the play, indeed one of the most famous images in literature. The source of the name is mysterious. It may be an adaptation of Erik, a common enough Danish name. Claudius, in fact, is called Erico in Der Bestrafte Brudermord (1710) a German adaptation of an earlier version of the play.
