The gravedigger seems none too fond of Yorick. I wonder if he runs across the skull often. Like – if he digs it up and buries it again, just to torment his old acquaintance. I mean, you don’t call just anyone a whoreson mad fellow. Whoreson isn’t really the nicest thing to say. It suggests a rather contentious relationship. Is that just because of the flagon of Rhenish on his head? That just sounds like a frat prank. Or a schoolboy in the cafeteria cutting up with his friends, though what a group of schoolboys would be doing with a container of wine, I’m not sure. But really – this just sounds like an obnoxious boys will be boys situation. But it clearly got under the gravedigger’s skin and he has never forgotten it – even 23 years after the man’s death. I wouldn’t put it past him to treat his bones particularly irreverently.
I wonder if it’s a situation of Yorick punching down, a bit – like in order to get a laugh, he dumped wine over this young clown’s head and everyone laughed but they laughed at the young clown, not with him and he felt humiliated and pushed down -his dignity defiled in the company of royals.
Maybe he’d hoped to leave gravedigging and make the career change to fooling and Yorick took that possibility from him with a flagon of wine to the head.
The Hamlet Project 