In his work Hamlet, William Shakespeare makes a passing reference to bungholes, as Hamlet contemplates the skull of his old friend Yorick, and how even such high mortals as Alexander the Great must inevitably return to lowly dust:
- Hamlet: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
- Horatio: ‘Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.
- Hamlet: No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
