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Enter Two Clowns, with spades, &c.

1 CLO. Is she to be buried in christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

2 CLO. I tell thee she is; and therefore make her grave straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it christian burial.

1 CLO. How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?

2 CLO. Why, 'tis found so.

1 CLO. 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.

2 CLO. Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,1 CLO. 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.(1)

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 sayst: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even christian.-Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, 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 digged; could he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself

(*) First folio, an.

a-even christian.-] This old expression for fellow christian

is frequently met with in the early English writers. See the Variorum, 1821, Vol. VIII. ad l. where several examples are cited by Steevens and Malone.

2 CLO. Go to.

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

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." 2 CLO. Marry, now I can tell.

1 CLO. To 't.

2 CLO. Mass, I cannot tell.

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a What is he that builds, &c.] Queries of this description formed a favourite item in the homely festivities of our forefathers. One of the earliest collections of them known, is a little book called "Demaundes Joyous," printed in 1511, by Wynkyn de Worde, of the questions in which Steevens remarks, "The innocence may deserve a praise, which is not always due to their delicacy."

band unyoke.] A rustic phrase for giving over work, of which the meaning here may be, as Caldecott explains it,"Unravel this, and your day's work is done, your team you may then un harness.'

e Go, get thee to Yaughan;] Whether by "Yaughan" a man or place is meant, or whether the word is a corruption, we are not qualified to determine. Mr. Collier once conjectured that it

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A pick-are, 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.

HAM. 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? Hum! 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 ?(3)

HOR. Not a jot more, my lord.

HAM. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins? HOR. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

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"might be a misunderstood stage-direction for the 1 Clown to yawn;" he now accepts the emendation of his annotater, who reads "to yon.

da politician,-] A plotter, a schemer for his own advantage; so Hotspur calls Henry the Fourth,-"this vile politician;" and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, who had scant brains for circumvention, declares he had as lief be a Brownist as a politician,”

e For and-] "For and," as Mr. Dyce has shown, answers here to "And eke," as the line reads in a version of this song published in Percy's Relics of Ancient English Poetry,

"And eke a shrowding shete.".

CC 2

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

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, and yet it is mine.

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

1 CLO. 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 't will again, from me to you.

HAM. What man dost thou dig it for?

1 CLO. For no man, sir.

HAM. What woman, then?

1 CLO. For none, neither.

HAM. Who is to be buried in 't?

away

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

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 is grown so picked," that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.-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 o'ercame Fortinbras.

HAM. How long is that since?

you

1 CLO. Cannot tell that? every fool can tell that it was the very day that young Hamlet was born, he that was 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, it's no great matter there.

HAM. Why?

1 CLO. 'T will not be seen in him; 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.

(*) First folio, heeles of our.

a We must speak by the card.] To speak by the card is explained to be a metaphor from the seaman's card or chart; it is rather an allusion to the card and calendar of etiquette, or book of manners, of which more than one were published during Shakespeare's age.

bso picked,-] That is, so refined, so fastidious, so precise. C- three-and-twenty years.] The quarto 1603 reads,→→

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. I'faith, if he be not rotten before he die (as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in) 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 tanned with his trade, that he will keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.

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HAM. This?

1 CLO. E'en that.

HAM. 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 now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Nott 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.-Prythee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

HOR. What 's that, my lord?

HAM. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

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a Imperious Cæsar.-] So the quartos; the folio substituted Imperiall, "not knowing," perhaps, as Malone observes, "that

loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

a

Imperious 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 to expel the winter's flaw !But soft! but soft! aside :-here comes the king,

imperious was used in the same sense,"

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Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial.

LAER. Must there no more be done?

1 PRIEST.

No more be done! We should profane the service of the dead, To sing a requiem, and such rest to her, As to peace-parted souls.

*

LAER.

Lay her i' the earth And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!-I tell thee, churlish priest, A minist'ring angel shall my sister be, When thou liest howling.

HAM.

What, the fair Ophelia ! QUEEN. Sweets to the sweet farewell! [Scattering flowers.

I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,

And not t' have strew'd thy grave.

LAER. O, treble woe t Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv'd thee of!-Hold off the earth a while, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms : [Leaps into the grave.

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