argal he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.

2 Clo. But is this law?

1 Clo. Ay, marry, is't; crowner's-quest law.

2 Clo. Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out of Christian burial.

1 Clo. Why, there thou say'st; and the more pity, that great folks shall have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even-Christian.* — Come, ny spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, litchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession. 2 Clo. Was he a gentleman?

1 Clo. He was the first that ever bore arms.

2 Clo. Why, he had none.

1 Clo. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digg'd: could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself—

2 Clo. Go to.

1 Clo. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

2 Clo. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

1 Clo. I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows does well: But how does it well? it does well to those that do ill: now, thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the church argal the gallows may do well to thee. To't again;

come.

2 Clo. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?

1 Clo. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.5

2 Clo. Marry, now I can tell.

1 Clo. To't.

2 Clo. Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance.

1 Clo. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull as will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are ask'd this question next, say a grave-maker: the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor. [Exit 2 Clown.

4 Even-Christian for fellow - Christian was the old mode of expression; and is to be found in Chaucer and the Chroniclers. Wicliffe has even-ser vant for fellow-servant.

5 This was a common phrase for giving over or ceasing to do a thing, a metaphor derived from the unyoking of oxen at the end of their labour.

1 Clown digs and sings.

In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,

To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
O, methought there was nothing meet.

Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

Hor. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. Ham. 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

1 Clo. [Sings.] But age, with his stealing steps,

Hath claw'd me in his clutch,

And hath shipp'd me intil the land,

As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a Skull.

Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?

Hor. It might, my lord.

Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say Good-morrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord? This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that prais'd my Lord Such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not? Hor. Ay, my lord.

7

Ham. Why, e'en so; and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and knock'd about the mazzard with a sexton's spade: Here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't.

1 Clo. [Sings.] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet:

8

The original ballad from whence these stanzas are taken is printed in Tottel's Miscellany, or Songes and Sonnettes by Lord Surrey and others, 1575. The ballad is attributed to Lord Vaux, and is printed by Dr. Percy in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry The ohs and the ahs are meant to express the Clown's gruntings as he digs.

7 The skull that was my Lord Such-a-one's is now my Lady Worm's.

8 Loggats are small logs or pieces of wood. Hence loggats was the name of an ancient rustic game, wherein a stake was fixed in the ground at which loggats were thrown; in short, a ruder kind of quoit play.

9"For and," says Mr Dyce, in the present version of the stanza, answers to And eke in that given by Percv." So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle: "Your squire doth come, and with him comes the lady, for and the Squire of Damsels, as I take it." And in Middleton's Fair Quarrel: "A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus."

O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another Skull. Ham. There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets,10 his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel,11 and will not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

12

Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.

Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

Hor. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

13

Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this, sir?

Ham. I think it be thine indeed; for thou liest in't.

1 Clo. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not yours:

for my part, I do not lie in't, yet it is mine.

Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't, and say it is thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

1 Clo. 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away again, from me to you.

Ham. What man dost thou dig it for?

10 Quid fits are quirks, or subtle questions; and quillets are nice and frivo Jous distinctions. The etymology of this last word nas plagued many learned heads. Blount, in his Glossography, clearly points out quodlibet as the origin of it. Bishop Wilkins calls a quillet a frivolousness."

11 Sconce was not unfrequently used for head.

12 Shakespeare here is profuse of his legal learning. Ritson, a lawyer, shall interpret for him: "A recovery with double voucher is so called from two persons being successively voucher, or called upon to warrant the tenant's title. Both fines and recoveries are fictions of law, used to convert an estate tail into a fee simple. Statutes are (not acts of parliament but) statutes merchant and staple, particular modes of recognizance or acknowledgment for securing debts, which thereby become a charge upon the party's land Statutes and recognizances are constantly mentioned together in the convenants of a purchase deed."

13 A quibble is here implied upon parchment; deeds, which were always written on parchment, being in legal language common assurances."

"

1 Clo. For no man, sir.

Ham. What woman, then?

1 Clo. For none, neither.

Ham. Who is to be buried in't?

1 Clo. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she s dead.

14

Ham. How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the age

15

is grown

so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.16 How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

1 Clo. Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. Ham. How long is that since?

:

1 Clo. Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is mad, and sent into England.

Ham. Ay, marry; why was he sent into England?

1 Clo. Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, 'tis no great matter there. Ham. Why?

1 Clo. "Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.

Ham. How came he mad?

1 Clo. Very strangely, they say.

Ham. How strangely?

1 Clo. 'Faith, e'en with losing his wits.

Ham. Upon what ground?

1 Clo. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.

Ham. How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot?

1 Clo. 'Faith, if he be not rotten before he die, he will last you some eight year, or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year.

Ham. Why he more than another?

1 Clo. Why, sir, his hide is so tann'd with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your dead body. Here's a skull now; this skull hath lain you i' the earth three-and-twenty years. Hum. Whose was it?

1 Clo. A mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was? Ham. Nay, I know not.

14 To speak by the card, is to speak precisely, by rule, or according to a prescribed course. It is a metaphor from the seaman's card, or chart, by which he guides his course.

15 Picked is curious, over-nice.

16 Kibe is an old word for chilblain. The Poet has it several times.

1 Clo. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! 'a pour'd a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir,

was Yorick's skull, the King's jester.

Ham. This?

1 Clo. E'en that.

Ham. Let me see. [Taking the Skull.]-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. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that!— Pr’ythee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Hor. What's that, my lord?

Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look'd o' this fashion i' the earth?

Hor. E'en so.

Ham. And smelt so? pah!

Hor. E'en so, my

lord.

[Puts down the Skull.

Ham. 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?

Hor. "Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

Ham. 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?

Imperial Cæsar, 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 flaw! 17 ——

But soft! but soft! aside: - here comes the King,

Enter Priests, &c., in Procession; the Corpse of OPHELIA, LAERTES and Mourners following; the KING, the QUEEN their Trains, &c.

The Queen, the courtiers. Who is that they follow,
And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken,

17 A flaw is a violent gust of wind.