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Who really said it

Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well

Shakespeare’s line — but misquoted William Shakespeare 1564–1616 · English playwright; Hamlet first printed 1603
Disputed Free to reuse

The line really is Shakespeare’s — Hamlet in the graveyard, Hamlet Act 5, Scene 1, holding the skull of the court jester — but the words are not these. The 1603 first quarto reads “alas poore Yoricke I knew him Horatio,” and standard editions print “I knew him, Horatio”; “well” is a later popular corruption.

Last verified 29 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well” William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1 (first printed 1603). The line reads "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio" — "I knew him well" is a later misquotation. Verified via Quotle.info Verbatim: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”

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In context

Evoking the world of William Shakespeare — English playwright and poet. Theme: "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The line as it was printed

Play
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
What it actually says
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio”
First printed
First quarto, 1603; enlarged second quarto, 1604 (some copies 1605); First Folio, 1623
Speaker
Hamlet, to Horatio, over the gravedigger’s spoil heap

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Act 5, Scene 1

The four words everyone remembers — “I knew him well” — are not in the speech. What gets dropped is the name of the man Hamlet is speaking to.

Facsimile of the 1603 first quarto
Griggs photo-lithographic facsimile at the Internet Archive
Internet Shakespeare Editions: Hamlet, First Quarto (1603), scene 16

How we checked

Public domain

Hamlet was first printed in 1603, reprinted in an enlarged quarto dated 1604 and collected in the 1623 First Folio — all far earlier than the 1931 US public-domain cutoff, so the text of the play is free to quote. The variant “I knew him well” has no identifiable author or claimant; individual modern editions do carry their own editorial matter, so we quote from a pre-1931 edited text.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Right author, wrong words

This is the rare case where the famous name is correct and the famous wording is not. Nobody else wrote the line; the corruption happened inside the quotation itself.

“I knew him well” Misquotation

The word Hamlet actually says is a name, not an adverb. Phrase historians note the line “is often misquoted” in this form, against the real reading “I knew him Horatio” ↗, and the 1603 quarto already prints “alas poore Yoricke I knew him Horatio” ↗.

Cut stage versions with no Horatio Suggested, not proven

Oxford’s quotations editors observe that “I knew him well” may not be simply a failure of memory: it has been pointed out that in some heavily cut versions of Hamlet the character of Horatio was excised, and the variant could have derived from the memory of such a performance ↗. That is offered as a possibility, not a documented origin.

Nineteenth-century print sellers Catalogued [1840?]

A lithograph by William Newman, published by G.S. Tregear at 96 Cheapside, is titled “Hamlet alas poor Yorick! I knew him well” and is catalogued by Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library as [1840?] ↗. The misquote long predates social media.

Shakespeare wrote the line; he did not write “well.” The sourced text, in Wikiquote’s Act V, Scene i, reads “I knew him, Horatio” ↗.

Context

Why the wrong version wins

Hamlet is not making a speech to an audience here. A gravedigger tosses up a skull, names it as the king’s old jester, and Hamlet turns to the friend standing next to him: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” The name is the point — it fixes the moment as one man telling another that the clown who carried him on his back is now a lump of bone in his hand.

Swap “Horatio” for “well” and the line stops belonging to the play. It becomes portable: a caption for any dead thing, sayable by anyone holding anything. As Jem Bloomfield notes of the change, the alteration has the advantage of decontextualising the line ↗ — which is also a fair description of why it spread.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.

The three early texts, and where the corruption shows up

The Internet Shakespeare Editions summary of the early texts records an unauthorised first quarto of 1603, an authorised second quarto dated 1604 (some copies 1605) “newly imprinted and enlarged,” and the 1623 First Folio, set from a scribal manuscript — see Hamlet: The Texts ↗. The 1603 quarto, the shortest and strangest of the three, already has “I knew him Horatio.”

The corrupted wording was in print culture a long time before the internet: Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library holds a lithograph titled “Hamlet alas poor Yorick! I knew him well,” published by G.S. Tregear at 96 Cheapside and catalogued as [1840?] ↗. We make no claim that this is the earliest instance — only that it is a dated, catalogued one.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Mortality Friendship Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Hamlet, First Quarto (1603) — scene 16internetshakespeare.uvic.ca

Old-spelling transcription of the 1603 quarto: “alas poore Yoricke I knew him Horatio.”
Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1 (modern spelling)shakespeare-online.com

The graveyard scene in modern spelling, following K. Deighton’s Macmillan edition.
Hamlet: the first quarto, 1603 (facsimile)archive.org

William Griggs’ photo-lithographic facsimile of the 1603 quarto, with forewords by F. J. Furnivall.
Misquotation: Hamlet (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations)oupacademic.tumblr.com

OUP’s entry naming “I knew him, Horatio” as the textually correct reading.
‘Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio’phrases.org.uk

Phrase history that flags the “I knew him well” version as the common misquotation.
‘Hamlet alas poor Yorick! I knew him well’ — Yale recordcollections.library.yale.edu

Lewis Walpole Library catalogue data for a Tregear lithograph carrying the misquoted title, dated [1840?].

About the author

The man who wrote the other version

William Shakespeare

1564–1616 · English playwright and poet

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is the most quoted writer in English, which is exactly why so many lines circulate in shapes he never wrote. Hamlet reached print in three early versions — an unauthorised quarto of 1603, an enlarged quarto of 1604, and the 1623 First Folio — and the graveyard speech survives in all of them as a private aside to one man standing beside Hamlet: Horatio. The skull-in-hand image became the single most reproduced picture of an actor in the role, and the caption travelled faster than the text.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

William Shakespeare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, first quarto (London: printed for N. L. and Iohn Trundell, 1603), scene 16: “alas poore Yoricke I knew him Horatio”; old-spelling transcription, Internet Shakespeare Editions. Modern-spelling text: Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1, as printed in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. K. Deighton (London: Macmillan, 1919).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well’?” Last verified 29 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/alas-poor-yorick-i-knew-him-well/

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