A Postmodern Reading of Salman Rushdie’s Yorick

Yes, fools were wise, as wise as

clocks, for they knew their time for what it was.

Salman Rushdie is one of the most prolific modern authors whose critically acclaimed
literary work displays hybrid quality. His novels and short stories are the perfect mixture of
modernism, postmodernism, postcolonialism and magic realism. In this paper we will offer one
of the many possible readings of Rushdie’s short story Yorick using the postmodern
interpretative framework.
Yorick is one of the nine stories in Rushdie’s only collection of short fiction, East, West
(1994). Prior to East, West, the story had been published in literary magazine Encounter (1982)
and it was subsequently revised to fit the new context.1
As suggested by its title, the short story focuses on the character of Yorick, the dead court
jester whose skull briefly appears in the Act 5 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It gives a different
insight into Hamlet’s childhood, his character and the events that preceded the tragedy. Author-
narrator came into possession of Yorick’s saga by processes too arcane to be of any interest to
the reader (Rushdie, 1982: 3). The tale was inscribed upon strong vellum, the same one that fell,
near enough two hundred and twenty-five years ago, into the hands of a certain − no, a most
uncertain – Tristram (Rushdie, 1982: 3). The opening paragraphs thus disclose two main
intertexts encoded in velluminous history2: Shakespeare’s eponymous play and Laurence Sterne’s
novel Tristram Shandy.3 Narrator reveals his true identity once the story is completed. He too
belongs to Yorick’s bloodline.
In devising his story Rushdie rejects traditional linear model in favor of postmodern
fragmented metafictional narrative.4 Yorick’s metafictional aspect is highlighted by a self-
referential narrator that addresses the reader, makes digressions and explains his creative process
throughout the story. I repeat in case you have forgotten my purpose (Rushdie, 1982: 3); the
1
Textual analysis and comparison of different versions can be found in the following paper: McDonald, Russel: “
Harnessing the Currents of Textual Fluidity: Salman Rushdie’s Making of East, West”, Textual Culters, Vol. 10,
No. 2, Spring 2016, pp. 95−99.
2
The word velluminous is a portmanteau, combining the words vellum and voluminous (McDonald, 2016: 95).
3
Parson Yorick, one of the characters in the novel, supposedly descends from Shakespeare’s Yorick.
4
“Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its
status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (Waugh, 2001: 2).

1
complete inventory of such strategies of destructions would overfill more pages than my ration
(Rushdie, 1982: 3); Solve your riddle, reader, and you’ll know (Rushdie, 1982: 7) – are some of
authorial comments woven into the fictional narrative. Traditional, omniscient narrator tells the
story with utmost certainty. Narrator in postmodern prose (de)constructs it and he does so in
front of his readers’ eyes, reminding them that they are not simply reading a story, but
experiencing the telling and/or creation of that story (Kapadia, 2008: 7).
Yorick’s descendant possesses no absolute knowledge. He gives different and conflicting
accounts of the same events and even confesses that he lacks the creative imagination that is
necessary to fill up the missing pieces of the story: I'll leave soliloquies to better pens; my
vellum's silent on what Hamlet felt while locked and wealy in his room (Rushdie, 1982: 6). When
he can’t decipher the unclear and smudged parts of the vellum, he makes assumptions or leaves it
to the reader to decide on a possible set of events. Therefore, the story is still “in the making”
with the reader occupying the position of a co-author.
The plot is based on the Freudian reading of Hamlet and the psychoanalytical concept of
the Oedipus Complex. Young Danish prince is depicted as a lonesome child, plagued by
sleeplessness and the lack of parental love. He sees the jester as a second, surrogate parent, a
father as well as a servant, viz. the best, most perfect father, for every son would make his father
a slave (Rushdie, 1982: 5). His mother Gertrude is oftentimes absent and occupied by important
affairs of state. On one such solitary night, while a banquet was held in Fortinbras honour, young
Hamlet looks for his mother, steps into her chamber and hides behind the curtains. Hidden from
the view, he witnesses a sexual encounter between his parents but he misinterprets it as a
murderous attack and confronts the King, who then brutally punishes him. The fear for his
mother’s safety, the hatred for his father and the wish for revenge result in a cunning scheme. He
uses Yorick as his tool, poisons him with jealousy and the jester, that was once just a fool-
professional, becomes a fool-actual (Rushdie, 1982: 7). It was him, and not Claudius, that killed
the King of the Danes. “In this it’s true my history differs from Master Shakespeare’s, and ruins
at least one great soliloquy. I offer no defence. But this: that these are matters shrouded in
antiquity, and there’s no certainty in them; so let the versions of the story coexist, for there’s no
need to choose” (Rushdie, 1982: 7, emphasis added). This statement, which belongs both to the
fictional narrator and empirical author, encapsulates the essence of postmodernism. There is no

2
one pure text and there is no one true interpretation. Different versions and variants are equally
possible, permissible and interconnected.
Linda Hutcheon defines postmodernism as “a fundamentally contradictory enterprise: its
art forms (and its theory) at once use and abuse, install and then destabilize convention in
parodic ways, self-consciously pointing both to their own inherent paradoxes and provisionally
and, of course, to their critical or ironic re-reading of the art of the past” (Hutcheon, 2003: 23,
emphasis added). Rushdie employs these postmodern strategies and combines (meta)critical 5 and
ironic discourse to create a multilayered palimpsest.
The source text is not only reinterpreted and given a novel form, but it is entirely
de(con)structed.6 The great tragic hero of Shakespeare’s play is here portrayed as a tyrannical
child who takes an almost sadistic pleasure in inflicting physical pain to the court jester. The text
begins to ramble, to list in grueful detail all the crimes committed by the prince upon the jester's
person: each imprint of heir apparent boot upon his buttocks (Rushdie, 1982: 5). Narrator cuts
the list short by sarcastically claiming that the Prince of Denmark had a feeling side too, which
made him puke generously on Yorick’s dingling cap upon seeing the blood (Rushdie, 1982: 5).
Shakespeare’s Ophelia is absent from the story, but her namesake, Yorick’s wife, is a woman of
equal beauty and the same fatal fate. What differentiates her from Hamlet’s future bride-to-
(never)-be is the rottenest smelling exhalation in the state of Denmark (Rushdie, 1982: 4).7
Author-narrator invents a grotesque catalogue to describe the smell of Ophelia’s breath
comparing it with a tepid stench of rats' livers, toads' piss, high game-birds, rotting teeth,
gangrene, skewered corpses, burning witchflesh, sewers, politicians' consciences, skunkhomes,
sepulchres, and all the beelzebubbling pickle-vats of hell (Rushdie, 1982: 4). The tale thus loses
its original tragic tone and becomes a comic and ironic re-writing of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Short story is a genre that proves to be a litmus test that every writer who aspires to
greatness must pass. Rushdie manages to retell a well-known story in an original way, occupying
no more than several pages. It is elaborate yet concise, intricate yet straightforward, picturesque
yet essayistic narrative that closes the gap between disjunctions.
5
Rushdie’s Yorick can also be interpreted and analyzed as a creative metacriticism or metafictive criticism that
reexamines psychoanalytical, postcolonial and social readings of Shakespeare’s play (Arikan, 2018: 1−7).
6
Ganapathy-Doré argues that the presence of Shakespeare in Rushdie may be viewed not so much as an attempt to
deconstruct and subvert the canon but rather as an unconscious effort to rival and reinvent his genius in the novel
form (Ganapathy-Doré, 2009: 9).
7
It is a parodic word play and intertextual reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Something is rotten in the state of
Denmark”.

3
 The writing style is worthy of the highest acclaim but it is by no means an easy read. It
calls for an erudite reader that has extensive knowledge of the Western canon; one that is able to
connect the intertextual dots and peel off the layers of the palimpsest. It is a rewarding quest
though; a pleasant intellectual puzzle; a treasure-box filled up with carefully selected diamond-
words that strikingly resemble Shakespeare’s copia verborum.
And to challenge the Bard, one must be a Master himself. Rushdie undoubtedly is.

Emilija Milosavljević, 157

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 References

 Arikan, Seda: “Metacriticism in Salman Rushdie’s Short Story Yorick”, Cilt, Vol. 35, No.
1, June 2018, pp. 1−9.
https://www.academia.edu/37986085/
Metacriticism_in_Salman_Rushdies_Short_Story_Yorick_ [30.1.2021]
 Ganapathy-Doré, Geetha: “Shakespeare in Rushdie/Shakespearean Rushdie”, Atlanits:
Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 31.2, December 2009, pp.
9−22.
https://www.atlantisjournal.org/old/ARCHIVE/31.2/2009Ganapathy-Dore.pdf
[30.1.2021]
 Hutcheon, Linda: A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, London and
New York: Routlegde, 2003.
 Kapadia, Parmita: “Transnational Shakespeare: Salman Rushdie and intertextual
appropriation”, Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation,
3(2), pp. 1−21.
 McDonald, Russel: “Harnessing the Currents of Textual Fluidity: Salman Rushdie’s
Making of East, West”, Textual Culters, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring 2016, pp. 76−106.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26514868?seq=30#metadata_info_tab_contents
[30.1.2021]
 Rushdie, Salman: “Yorick”, Encounter, 59.3–4, September 1982, pp. 3–8.
https://www.unz.com/print/Encounter-1982sep-00003 [30.1.2021]
 Waugh, Patricia: Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction,
London and New York: Routledge, 2001.