<P> This theme of Memento mori (' Remember you shall die') is common in 16th - and 17th - century painting, appearing in art throughout Europe . Images of Mary Magdalene regularly showed her contemplating a skull . It is also a very common motif in 15th - and 16th - century British portraiture . </P> <P> Memento mori are also expressed in images of playful children or young men, depicted looking at a skull as a sign of the transience of life . It was also a familiar motif in emblem books and tombs . </P> <P> Hamlet meditating upon the skull of Yorick has become a lasting embodiment of this idea, and has been depicted by later artists as part of the vanitas tradition . </P> <P> The name Yorick has been interpreted as an attempt to render a Scandinavian forename: usually either "Erick" or "Jørg", a form of the name George . The name "Rorik" has also been suggested, since it appears in Saxo Grammaticus, one of Shakespeare's source texts, as the name of the queen's father . There has been no agreement about which name is most likely . </P>

Here hung those lips that i have kissed i know not how oft