About the Cover

The fine art image used on the book cover is from a work by French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix. In 1839, Delacroix began a series of lithographs depicting sixteen scenes from "Hamlet". Delacroix rendered three of the lithographs in oil. In this scene, "Hamlet and Horatio in the Churchyard", housed in the Louvre, the skull of Yorick has been revealed to Hamlet.

Hamlet has just returned to Denmark from what he was told was to be a brief exile in England, but, as he later discovered, was in fact meant to be a summary execution on a foreign shore. Since Hamlet has been traveling incognito, the gravedigger has no idea he is conversing with a prince. This is a moment of revelation for Hamlet, as he is forced to confront his own mortality, and muses about how quickly the dead fade from human memory.

Front Cover

Back Cover

Hard Cover