Yorick

Yorick is the deceased court-jester whose bones are exhumed by the gravedigger in Act 5, Scene 1, of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The sight of Yorick's skull evokes a monologue from Prince Hamlet on the vile effects of death. The contrast between Yorick as "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy" and his grim remains is a variation on the theme of earthly vanity (cf Vanitas): death being unavoidable, the things of this life are inconsequential. Though this theme of Memento mori ('Remember you shall die') is common in 16th and 17th century painting (see especially Mary Magdalene), Hamlet meditating upon the skull of Yorick has become the most lasting embodiment of this idea.

Yorick is the name of a vicar in Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy. The figure of Yorick is often taken for a rueful self-portrait.

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Yorick is also an interpreted programming language designed for numerics, graph plotting and steering large scientific simulation codes. It is quite fast due to array syntax, and extensible via C or Fortran routines. It was created in 1996 by David Munro.

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