But there you have it: the late Bernard Lewis did precisely that. Just imagine: What sort of a person would spend a lifetime studying people he loathes? It is quite a bizarre proposition. He was a notorious Islamophobe who spent a long life studying Islam in order to demonise Muslims and mobilise the mighty military of what he called “the West” against them. He was instrumental in causing enormous suffering and much bloodshed in this world. But Bernard Lewis was not a regular rogue. It is unseemly to recall the horrors of a horrible man upon his passing. It murmur’d -“Gently, Brother, gently, pray!” Then the lines of an Omar Khayyam poem and his unceasing awareness of the mortality of human presence ran through my mind: I was instantly reminded of Yorick’s skull and Hamlet when I heard Bernard Lewis had died.

It is here that Hamlet says his famous lines: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.” It turns out the skull is Yorick’s, the king’s jester. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and no, how abhorred in my imagination it is!” says Hamlet.“ Here’s a skull now this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years,” the gravedigger tells Hamlet. Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. This really helps Hamlet understand the deeper meaning of death as he learns that all mankind will be consumed by death at some point of their life whether they desire it or not. Yorick was lively and was mostly positive from what Hamlet says while Hamlet is melancholy and wishes to die, yet Yorick himself is the one that is dead. When Hamlet sees Yorick’s skull, he can clearly see death’s vengeance, he can visualize it. He talks with the grave digger who then shows him a Yorick’s skull.

He feels that this grave-digger is treating the lives of possible noblemen with such insensitivity. Hamlet is offended by the grave digger’s nonchalant attitude about his job and especially towards the skulls being throw. The scene begins with a strong emphasis on the insignificance of death. Hamlet and Horatio enter a graveyard and find a grave digger singing merely about his job while throwing skulls about and digging a grave to eventually be where Ophelia is buried. The scene is seemingly innocent but carries immense importance in Hamlet’s acceptance of death. This passage is the moment Hamlet understands death as something to be a tangible and universal experience. Whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel? The dust is the earth, of earth we make loam,and why of that loam Modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: Alexander died,Īlexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, No, faith, not a jot, but to follow him thither with

Infinite jest hamlet