Alas, Poor Yorick!: Skulls and Comedy in the Renaissance
Where: Morbid Anatomy Museum
424 Third Ave. Brooklyn
Price: $8
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An Illustrated Lecture with Susan Harlan
What does a skull mean? In Renaissance Europe, it wasn’t just a reminder of the transience of life and the certainty of death, but a more complex symbol one that called for contemplation, meditation, and sometimes, jokes. So when is a skull funny? Harlan will discuss the relationship between skulls and comedy in the Renaissance, from the erotics of Hans Holbeins woodcuts of the Dance of Death, which invoked the concluding wedding revels of comedies, to his playfully dark painting The Ambassadors, to Vesalius humorous Skeleton Contemplating a Skull. The lecture will conclude with a consideration of Hamlets wittily melancholic encounter with the smelly cranium of the jester Yorick.
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