Ham. 
Why?

1 Clown.  ’Twill not he seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

Ham. 
How came he mad?

1 Clown.  Very strangely, they say.

Ham. 
How strangely?

1 Clown.  Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

Ham. 
Upon what ground?

1 Clown.  Why, here in Denmark:  I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

Ham. 
How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?

1 Clown.  Faith, if he be not rotten before he die,—­as we have many pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in,—­he will last you some eight year or nine year:  a tanner will last you nine year.

Ham. 
Why he more than another?

1 Clown.  Why, sir, his hide is so tann’d with his trade that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.  Here’s a skull now; this skull hath lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.

Ham. 
Whose was it?

1 Clown.  A whoreson, mad fellow’s it was:  whose do you think it was?

Ham. 
Nay, I know not.

1 Clown.  A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! ’a pour’d a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.  This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester.

Ham. 
This?

1 Clown.  E’en that.

Ham.  Let me see. [Takes the skull.] 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 kiss’d 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 on a roar?  Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?  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.—­Pr’ythee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Hor. 
What’s that, my lord?

Ham. 
Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?

Hor. 
E’en so.

Ham. 
And smelt so?  Pah!

[Throws down the skull.]

Hor. 
E’en so, my lord.

Ham.  To what base uses we may return, Horatio!  Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

Hor. 
’Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.

Ham. 
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty
enough, and likelihood to lead it:  as thus:  Alexander died,
Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is
earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he
was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? 
   Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,
   Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 
   O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
   Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw! 
But soft! but soft! aside!—­Here comes the king.