...from the dust, and to the dust we return. Shakespeare puts our dust in context when in Hamlet he says, "Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."1 We may be noble creatures, only a little lower than the angels, but we are made...

...earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 0 that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t' expel the...

...by thoughts of love. His musings then turn from Yorick to Alexander the Great and finally to Caesar: Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t'expel the winter's...

...faith, not a jot," and traces Alexander the Greats decomposition into loam "to stop a beer-barrel." Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. The smell of rotting human flesh hovers over the final two acts of the play, as...

...extradiegetic reference to the fact that the same actor had indeed played both roles, and Hamlet muses on how 'Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away' (Vi206-7). Finally, Julius Caesar, like Hamlet, had a significant encounter with...