Alas, Poor Yorick

Book excerpt: Alas, Poor Yorick is a darkly funny first-person account of the life of the most famous fool in all literature, one we have known as but a skull in the hands of a brooding Hamlet. From that familiar graveyard setting, the novel’s Yorick speaks to us, angry that Hamlet had forgotten him all this time, hurt that Hamlet never wondered what had become of his witty boyhood companion. Yorick’s clever, compassionate tale tells us of his cruel childhood and father-inflicted deformity, of his passionate love for an Elsinore servant, Philia, of his training and trickery in order to become royal jester. Most of all, of why he ultimately swears revenge on Hamlet’s father, the humorless and self-righteous king of Denmark, and how he schemes to destroy him. The court, in fact, receives three sets of visitors -- King Lear and his Fool, Othello and Iago, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth -- each inspiring Yorick to a different mode of vengeance against the Danish king, each with its own tragic-comic results. Alas, Poor Yorick is a bold, bawdy twist on the Bard, a poetic tale of infinite jest and human frailty for all who love Hamlet in particular and Shakespeare in general.