er
mad ramblings.

Hamlet converses philosophically with the grave diggers about the bones,
skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and
when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a
sleep of twenty-three years, Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:

_"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 in my imagination
It 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 in 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 favor she must come;
Make her laugh at that!"_

The funeral procession with the corpse of Ophelia now appears, Laertes,
King, Queen, train, and priests attending.

The priests tell Laertes that were it not for "great command" his sister's
body "should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet,"
because of alleged suicide.

Laertes peremptorily says:

_"Lay her in the earth
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling in perdition."_

Laertes and Hamlet, both overpowered with frantic grief, leap into the
new-made grave and struggle for precedence of affection, the former
exclaiming:

_"Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus!"_

Hamlet, replying to the King, Queen and Laertes, says:

_"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers,
Could not, with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground
Singeing his pate against the burning zone
Make Ossa like a wart!"_

Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio, how on his voyage to England he
discovered that King Claudius gave commission to his enemies to send his
head to the block. Hamlet says:

_"Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There's a