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!

[1] The contrast between Yorick as "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" and his grim remains reflects on the theme of earthly vanity: death being unavoidable, the things of this life are inconsequential.

Memento mori are also expressed in images of playful children or young men, depicted looking at a skull as a sign of the transience of life.

Hamlet meditating upon the skull of Yorick has become a lasting embodiment of this idea, and has been depicted by later artists as part of the vanitas tradition.

[3] Alternative suggestions include the ideas that it may be derived from the Viking name of the city of York (Jórvík),[4] or that it is a near-anagram of the Greek word 'Kyrios' and thus a reference to the Catholic martyr Edmund Campion.

[5] The name was used by Laurence Sterne in his comic novels Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey as the surname of one of the characters, a parson who is a humorous portrait of the author.

He was portrayed by comedian Ken Dodd in a flashback during the gravedigging scene in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 film Hamlet.

Musical director Claire van Kampen, who later married Rylance, recalled: As a company, we all felt most privileged to be able to work the gravedigger scene with a real skull ...

In this production, Hamlet retained Yorick's skull throughout subsequent scenes, and it was eventually placed on a mantelpiece as a "talisman" during his final duel with Laertes.