Speaking to Yorick's skull Hamlet said Now run to my lady's bedroom and tell her Who is your lady?

Answer 1

This is an excellent question. The correct quotation is "Now get you 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."

Two possibilities suggest themselves. First, Yorick was the King's Jester, that is, the jester to Hamlet's father and mother and Hamlet himself when he was a child. Although he has been dead for 23 years, Hamlet can still remember how "he hath borne me on his back", that is, gave him piggyback rides as a child. The "lady" Yorick was employed to entertain was Queen Gertrude. She was the one who he had to make laugh.

But it is also possible that Hamlet may be talking about women in general. He could be saying that women, who vainly cover their faces with makeup, will all end up looking like Yorick does now. Death is not beautiful. It takes away beauty. Even in the hands of the most gifted jester, that's not funny.

If Hamlet means this in a general sense, then, although he may not specifically be thinking about her, we cannot help connecting his remarks with the girl to whom he said, "God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another" (He had a thing about makeup). And although he doesn't know it now, that girl is going into the same hole Yorick's skull came out of, to begin the 8 or 9 year transformation into his lookalike.

When Laertes says, "and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring", the picture of Yorick's skull must have flashed before Hamlet's eyes. Laertes wants to make death beautiful, but it's not. It's ugly. Laertes's attempt to make death beautiful and romantic by "painting an inch thick" are a sham and a lie and Hamlet hates him for it.