Help with Hamlet quote

[lucylucy]

From Act 5

Alas, poor Yorick!... Horatio, tell me one thing.

What does this dialogue reveal about the speaker.
What does this dialogue reveal about the characters present?

[Beewulf]

From Act 5

Alas, poor Yorick!... Horatio, tell me one thing.

What does this dialogue reveal about the speaker.
What does this dialogue reveal about the characters present?

Here's the speech:


(Holding Yorick's skull) Alas, poor Yorick! 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! my gorge rises it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? 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. (Turning towards Horatio) Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Reveal About the Speaker: Hamlet becomes aware of the impermanence of human life; in Yorick's skull, he is given a vivid example of how humans pass to dust, no matter how robust or beautiful they might have been in their prime. It's all rather funny, isn't it? No matter how much or how little we accomplish, no matter how good or bad we are, we all end up a pile of broken bones, rotting in a graveyard. To add insult to injury, our remains are treated with irreverence; moreover, the memory of who we were gradually passes from the minds of the living. Life is nothing but a long fall into the grave, a fall that culminates in obscurity and nothingness. As bumper-sticker philosophers put it: "Sh-t happens" or "Life's a B-tch, and Then You Die"

Hamlet is reaching the point where he is passing from tragic and destructive melancholy to ironic stoicism and a fatalistic acceptance. As he says to Horatio later in Act V, "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?" In other words: Don't worry about death; sooner or later, we all die--since we take nothing with us to the grave, it makes no difference if we die now or ten years from now.

Reveal About the [other?] Characters Present: I don't know . . .

[lucylucy]

Thank you so much for your help.
I've never been a Shakespeare fan, but trying to understand Shakespeare has become interesting with forums such as this.

[kelby_lake]

Once you get used to the language, you'll enjoy it much more.

[Beewulf]

Once you get used to the language, you'll enjoy it much more.

Yeah, but getting used to the language takes time . . . I get the sense that people have a growing impatience with trying to make sense of heightened or complex language.

Orwell imagined the destruction of language would be led by totalitarian governments--I think it's going to come about from tweeting, texting, and other forms of electronic communication that encourage an abbreviated and fragmentary style of thinking.