Alas, poor Yorick

Perhaps the most recognizable image from all of Shakespeare's plays is that of Hamlet contemplating a skull--the skull of Yorick, the court jester.

Why Yorick? While rereading Hamlet for my current "Shakespeare, Systems, and Intertextuality" course, I've come to understand one possible reason. The court of Claudius, the elder Hamlet's murderer and usurper, is a court without a jester--a court without anyone who can (to quote an old Quaker phrase) "speak truth to power."

One of the ways that Claudius's Denmark is corrupt is that information flow--essential to the continued existence of any system--has been distorted or blocked. (I count at least seven instances in the play of an attempt to gather information through deceit.)

I'll bet that after Yorick's death, the elder Hamlet's court continued to include jesters. But Claudius's court does not--until young Hamlet comes home. Hamlet's "Mousetrap" play can be seen as a replacement for the jests of a court fool. When this play-within-a-play restores some information flow, showing Claudius as he really is, Claudius panics and stops the show.

Something is rotten in the state--the system--of Denmark. Hamlet tries to restore that system to health by opening communication channels again. But he's too late, and the system collapses. Systems are often defined by contrasting them with mere heaps. The heap of bodies at the end of Act V provides a perfect illustration of the difference.