1 Clo. This same scull, sir, was Yorick's scull, the king's jester.
The frequency of such names as Eric and Roric in the Danish history, might have suggested that of the jester in question, but in a manner that may not very easily be discovered. Roric was the name of the king of Denmark contemporary with Hamlet, according to Saxo Grammaticus.
Scene 1. Page 311.
Ham. Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.——
There is good reason for supposing that Shakspeare borrowed this thought from some print or picture that he had seen. There are several which represent a lady at her toilet, and an old man presenting a scull before the mirror. A print by Goltzius exhibits Vanity as a lady sitting in her chamber with jewels, &c. before her, and surprised by the appearance of Death. In one of Henry the Eighth's wardrobe accounts, a picture at Westminster is thus described: "Item a table with the picture of a woman playing upon a lute, and an olde manne holding a glasse in th'one hande and a deadde mannes headde in th'other hande."—Harl. MS. No. 1419.
In a poem written by Anthony Scoloker, a printer, entitled Daiphantus, or The passions of love, comicall to reade, but tragicall to act, as full of wit, as experience, 1604, 4to, and recently quoted in p. [465], there are the following allusions to the play of Hamlet: In a quaint dedication he says, "It [the epistle] should be like the never-too-well read Arcadia, where the prose and verse (matter and words) are like his mistresses eyes, one still excelling another and without Corivall: or to come home to the vulgars element, like friendly Shake-speare's tragedies, where the commedian rides, when the tragedian stands on tiptoe: Faith it should please all, like prince Hamlet. But in sadnesse, then it were to be feared he would runne mad. In sooth I will not be moonesicke, to please: nor out of my wits though I displeased all."
"His breath he thinkes the smoke; his tongue a cole,
Then calls for bottell ale; to quench his thirst.
Runs to his Inke pot, drinkes, then stops the hole,
And thus growes madder, then he was at first.
Tasso he finds, by that of Hamlet, thinkes,
Tearmes him a mad-man; than of his Inkhorne drinks.