2 MAN Will you ha’ the truth on’t? If this had not been a gentlewoman she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial.
GRAVEDIGGER 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-Christen. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers and grave-makers. They hold up Adam’s profession.
2 MAN Was he a gentleman?
GRAVEDIGGER ’A was the first that ever bore arms. I’ll put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thy self.
2 MAN Go to. (5.1.24-36)
The second gravedigger is asking the big questions, and now about class: will you ha’ the truth on’t? Come on, you know what’s really going on here. If this had not been a gentlewoman she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial. We’re only digging this grave, here, in consecrated ground, because she was a lady.
This the older man totally concedes; that’s the way things are, and it’s a shame, but what can you do? why, there thou say’st—truth—and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christen. Posh people, they get to kill themselves and get away with it, but the plebs, as Christian as they are, not a chance. Come, my spade—does he get back to work? does he take it up as if a weapon, a staff of office? ask his mate to hand it to him? There’s a bit of consolation, though, in this world of class oppression: there is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers and grave-makers. They hold up Adam’s profession. Digging, it’s what they do—and it’s a reference to the proverbial, revolutionary assertion that class is a human construct, that all people are equal, for when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? To dig is to be human, and as good as Adam, the first man. (Often portrayed in images, post-Fall, with a spade—so the gravedigger, presenting his spade, is literally holding up Adam’s profession.) (And there’s a glance back at the Gardener in Richard II, similarly identified as Adam in a fallen Eden. The idiom is also not unlike the Cobbler who opens Julius Caesar.)
Was he a gentleman? the other man is skeptical—or even genuinely impressed. ’A was the first that ever bore arms—in the sense of, the first man, and therefore the first to have arms (and so able to dig, as a further line in the Folio text establishes; a gesture could accompany this. A coat of arms in the heraldic sense was the mark of a gentleman).
I’ll put another question to thee; my turn, then. If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself. If you don’t get it right, well, prepare for the worst (confession preceding death). Go to—ah, get away. Shut up yourself.
