Hamlet et Horatio au cimetière

Delacroix signed and dated this small canvas in 1859, 20 years after an earlier version of the same scene that also belongs to the Louvre. It is Act Five of Shakespeare's tragedy. The prince and his friend Horatio have come upon a gravedigger who sings as he works and throws up old bones, among them the skull of Yorick, the king's jester whom the prince knew as a boy. Look past them to the rise behind. A line of mourners is coming over it, carrying torches. In the play that procession is the funeral of Ophelia, and the grave being dug is hers, though Hamlet does not know it yet. The whole picture is only 36 centimetres wide, and the signature and date sit in the lower right corner.