The Skull

In Act 5 Scene 1, Hamlet has returned home from England. On his way, he runs into a pair of gravediggers. While talking to them, Hamlet finds the skull of his fathers former jester Yorik. Seeing the bare skull of someone Hamlet knew well brings him to a realization of how short life is. I think the skull symbolizes not only how short life is, and what is left of us in only a short time after dying; but, in hamlets eyes, our lack of purpose on earth. Seeing the skull starts hamlet on a painfully melancholy soliloquy.

"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 on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get yet 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."

-Hamlet to Yorik's skull