GRAVEDIGGER

(Sings.)

        In youth when I did love, did love,

        Methought it was very sweet

        To contract-a the time for-a my behove,

        O, methought there-a was nothing-a meet!

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET         Has this fellow no feeling of his business? ’A sings in grave-making.

HORATIO       Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

HAMLET         ’Tis e’en so. The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

GRAVEDIGGER

(Sings.)

        But age with his stealing steps

        Hath clawed me in his clutch

        And hath shipped me into the land

        As if I had never been such.

                                    (5.1.57-70)

It’s a jolly little song that the Gravedigger sings, at least initially: youth and youthful love are carefree (but there might be an implicit contrast with the play’s previous singer of songs about love, Ophelia, anything but carefree). I did whatever I wanted when I was young, he sings. But, finally, here are Hamlet and Horatio (yay, back together again) and Hamlet is initially appalled, or pretends to be: hath this fellow no feeling of his business? doesn’t he realise what he’s doing, shouldn’t he show some respect? ’A sings in gravemaking—he’s singing while digging an actual grave! Horatio’s sage: custom hath made it in him a property of easiness; I guess he’s used to it, it’s normal for him so it doesn’t bother him; he’s just doing his job, after all. ’Tis e’en so. Fair point. The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense: those of us who don’t labour like him can afford to have such scruples, to be a bit more refined. We don’t have to get our hands dirty.

Then the Gravedigger’s song takes a more serious turn, however, and he sings of the inexorability of time, age and death, the alliteration of stealing steps and especially clawed me in his clutch making it seem as if the Gravedigger himself has been caught by time and age, sneaked up on unawares, and grabbed, taken prisoner, swallowed. He has been shipped into the land—of death—as if I had never been such. Standing in the grave—if he is—he might look indeed as if he has been shipped into the land, but there’s also an echo of Hamlet’s imagining of death as the undiscovered country…