And get our jewels and our wealth together,
Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight. Now go we in content
To liberty and not to banishment.

HAMLET

PART OF ACT V

SCENE: A churchyard. Two grave-diggers.

1st G. D. Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

2d G. D. I tell thee she is; and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath set on her, and finds it Christian burial.

1st G. D. How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defense?

2d. G. D. Why, 'tis found so.

1st G. D. It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act: and an act hath three branches; it is, to act, to do, and to perform: Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

2d G. D.

Nay, but hear you, goodman delver. 1st. G. D. Give me leave. Here lies the water: good; here stands the man: good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes; mark you that; but if the water come to him, and drown him, he drowns not himself: Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death, shortens not his own life.

2d G. D. But is this law?

1st G. D. Ay, marry is't; crowner's quest-law. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers. I'll put a question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself2d G. D. Go to.

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

2d G. D. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

1st G. D. 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.

2d G. D. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?

1st G. D. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when you are asked this question next, say, a grave-maker: the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, fetch me a stoup of liquor.

1st G. D. [digs and sings]:

[Exit 2d Grave-digger.

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

To contract, (O!) the time, for a my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing-a 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. 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath

Ham.

the daintier sense.

1st G. D.:

But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a skull.

Hamlet. 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! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches, one that would circumvent heaven, might it not?

Hora. It might, my lord.

[Bones thrown up.

Hamlet. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with? Mine ache to think on't.

1st G. D. [sings]:

A pick-ax, and a spade, a spade,

For-and a shrouding sheet:
O! a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

[Throws up another skull.

Hamlet. There's another. Why might not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets,

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, and will not tell him of his action of battery? I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave's this, sir? 1st G. D.

Mine, sir. [Sings.]

O! a pit of clay for to be made

For such a guest is meet.

Hamlet. I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't. 1st G. D. You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in 't, and yet it is mine. Hamlet. 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. 1st G. D.

me to you.

'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away again, from

Hamlet.

1st G. D.

she's dead.

Who is to be buried in't?

One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul,

Hamlet. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us. How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

1st. G. D. Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

Hamlet.

1st G. D.

How long is that since?

Can not 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.

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

1st G. D. Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there. Hamlet.

Why?

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

Hamlet.

1st G. D.

Hamlet.

1st G. D.

Hamlet.

How came he mad?

Very strangely, they say.

How strangely?

'Faith, e'en with losing his wits. Upon what ground?

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

Hamlet. How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot? 1st G. D. '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. Here's a skull now; this skull hath lain i' the earth three-and-twenty years.

Hamlet. Whose was it?

1st G. D. A mad fellow's it was: Whose do you think it was?

Hamlet. Nay, I know not.

1st G. D. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once.

skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester. Hamlet. This?

This same

1st G. D. E'en that. Hamlet. Let me see. [Takes 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 kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes