How was it that Alexander’s reputation lasted so long? From his time to Shakespeare’s to ours?
And of course the answer is stories.
I wondered – because there isn’t an Odyssey or Iliad or Gilgamesh sort of epic – but there are many. He was the subject of many a romance and because he ranged round his corner of the globe quite widely – people told stories about him quite wildly and widely.
Myself, I always see Alexander as Sean Connery. This might be seen as peculiar if you haven’t seen Terry Gilliam’s film, Time Bandits, in which Sean Connery portrays a kind generous jolly sort of Alexander who is the only good father figure the child has known.

Horatio is one of those roles I have always imagined could be so easily played by a woman. I wasn’t sure why, really – but it occurs to me now that Horatio is playing a role in the play that is usually reserved for women in a story. He doesn’t have much identity of his own, he primarily serves Hamlet’s needs for companionship, for a sounding board, for support. This is what women do in so many stories – or at least the ones where they’re not saying. “No, you CAN’T go to war, that party, that mission, that adventure, it’s too dangerous!” But the ones that aren’t that…they’re like Horatio. Ah, I love to realize how much I have internalized the Patriarchy.

Suddenly, the idea of MAKING someone laugh feels quite aggressive – and in this case, cruel. Though, I do believe making someone laugh – or, rather, eliciting a laugh from someone, is one of the most pleasurable acts, on both sides of the equation. And a really good comedian probably could make someone laugh at their own mortality in this way.
But that’s not what Hamlet’s on about here. He’s more concerned with inflicting punishment on Ophelia, with confronting her with something upsetting and disturbing. It has a bit of the quality of The Joker in Batman, whose jokes are not funny – but are, in fact, thrust upon victims. The idea of MAKING someone laugh, at the moment, evokes a sense of tying them up and poking them until they surrender.
I wonder about language differences here. In Italian, fare ridere is also to make laugh. But it might carry more of the sense of crafting than compelling, I think.
I’d love to know how other languages construct making someone laugh.

It’s interesting how we seem to know that Hamlet is referring to Ophelia here and not, say, his mother. Is Ophelia still his lady in his mind? He broke up with her many scenes ago.
And the answer is, of course, forthcoming.
And, of course, to this favor she is already well on her way.
It’s pretty dark, there, Hamlet. Here you are trying to make a joke about your girlfriend’s mortality and it is not funny because she is already dead.
Also the prejudice against make-up is infuriating. And I am no great fan of the stuff. I like it for performance and that’s about it. But a woman who chooses to wear make-up probably has a much more heightened awareness of her own mortality than any man. In the attempt at “correcting” for “flaws” a woman who “paints” her face is in the most intimate contact with her own march toward the grave. She can mark, literally mark, each new line, each crack, each sign of age.

Until I looked up the etymology of chap, I thought this was pretty simple – just chaps, as in cheeks or jaw, as the face, fallen. Like – sad – like crestfallen. But funny because a skull has no chaps, no cheeks and the jaw won’t necessarily be attached.

But it turns out “chap” as a person was already in use in Shakespeare’s time – so he could also be a chap, fallen. Or the sense of cracking open, in fissures, as in chapped lips, a skull might also have a sense of separation – a cracking open between skull and jaw or wear and tear from getting dug up by a gravemaker every so often. Or maybe that’s all a reach and it’s just the jaw.

I kind of wish I’d taken that philosophy class in college. I feel like there’s a philosopher who talks about a doubling of self. Or maybe that’s a psychologist? And I did take that psychology class – but I can’t think of who that theorist might have been.
In any case – there is an interesting doubling of Yorick’s self here. The one who is dead, whose skull seems to be grinning due to the teeth and the one who would have made fun of such a morbid grin. There are two Yoricks in Hamlet’s mind.

It also occurred to me that there might be another interpretation available. It’s a stretch – so I don’t think it’s right but given that there is no fool or jester in this play, it would seem that after Yorick’s death, they didn’t replace him. So there is no official fool in the Danish Court.
The only fool left is the one Hamlet internalized.

In the right context, I can be this person. I’m not sure what the right context is but I do know how to crack up a table of people sometimes. I know when I can’t do it – it’s when there are comedians at the table or possibly even just other performers. It’s like – if there is a competition for the joke or the story or the cutting remark – I will lose that competition. I need space in the conversation to work my magic in this way. If the pace is quickfire, I will likely just remain quiet and any roaring the table does will be in response to the faster moving merriment. But when the rhythm is right, I can land joke after joke and feel like a party star.

Did Yorick make up songs or did he sing popular tunes of the day?
Songs do have a way of living beyond their creators. Not all of them, of course. The song I made up to help that toddler put on her shoes is entirely lost both to me and the toddler. But a song that has settled into itself and been sung by more than one person might well live on long after its maker. It is one of the great advantages of musical notation and musical recording – not to mention just living memory. Songs will stick in the minds of those who have lost all else. If you want to reach someone who seems unreachable in the fog of a diseased or damaged brain, songs are likely to be the way in.
So maybe Yorick’s songs lived on in Hamlet. At least for a while.

Even though I know that to gambol means to play around, skip about, to frolic, as it were – I still thought gambols were a particular dance move, like a jig or a caper or that move that Sir Andrew Aguecheek can do as well as any man in Illyria. But one moment with a dictionary clarifies that gambols are just the noun version of gamboling.

All of which makes me quite curious about Yorick’s gambols. How did he gambol? Gracefully? Awkwardly? Like a child or a clumsy fool? Was Yorick a joyful clown or a cynical one? I suspect he must have and a playful spirit to have connected so potently with the young Hamlet. But that doesn’t tell us his comic stylings.