YORICK’S KISS
This is the story is about how a joke can outlive a person.
Or how a person can outlive a joke.
MORAL
If you manage to tell a really good joke, that people can laugh at, after you are dead, it makes you immortal.
SCRIPT
Nothing happens for a moment.
The little play buttons appear on the screen. And the mouse finger moves to click play.
Nothing happens for a moment.
Then you hear the sound of someone chuckling. A very warm sound.
As the chuckling grows, we softly fade up from black onto a human skull.
The skull is held in a hand and is being manipulated.
The camera is the eye of the person holding the skull.
We don’t see the body at all.
Another hand - a finger - comes in and strokes the teeth of the skull.
VOICE:
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
AN ESSAY
I will tell you why […]
I have of late, (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.[