Leslie Hurry (1909-1978) trained at the Royal Academy and during the 1930s became known as a surrealist painter. A one-man show in London in 1942 was seen by the theatre director, Michael Benthall, who recommended Hurry to the dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann, then planning a ballet based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The success of his designs set Hurry on a second career as one of the most distinguished theatre designers of his generation. He designed operas, ballets and plays, notably Swan Lake for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1943, a production which stayed in the repertoire for thirty years; Venice Preserved for Peter Brook (1953); the Ring Cycle at Covent Garden (1954), and Troilus and Cressida at Stratford for Peter Hall (1960), famous for being staged in a sand pit.

Helpmann's one-act ballet was inspired by Shakespeare's lines 'For in that sleep what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil', and represents the distorted memories of the dying Hamlet. Helpmann wanted his audiences to be aware from the start that they were not about to see a mimed version of the play. He limited the named characters to eight. All are already dead, with the exception of the Gravedigger who is the first to appear. In Hamlet's confused mind, he becomes the long-deceased jester, Yorick. Hurry designed a costume that was on one side a gravedigger's leather tunic, on the other a multi-coloured jester's motley. At the back of the cap-and-bells headdress is attached a grinning skull.