GRAVEDIGGER          Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’th’ earth three and twenty years. HAMLET         Whose was it? GRAVEDIGGER          A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was? HAMLET         Nay, I know not. GRAVEDIGGER          A pestilence on him for a mad rogue. ’A poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once! […]

HAMLET         How long will a man lie i’th’ earth ere he rot? GRAVEDIGGER          Faith, if ’a be not rotten before ’a die (as we have many pocky corpses that will scarce hold the laying in) ’a will last you some eight year – or nine year – a tanner will last you nine year. HAMLET         […]

HAMLET         Ay, marry. Why was he sent into England? GRAVEDIGGER          Why, because ’a was mad. ’A shall recover his wits there. Or if ’a do not, ’tis no great matter there. HAMLET         Why? GRAVEDIGGER          ’Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he. HAMLET         How came he mad? GRAVEDIGGER          […]

HAMLET         [to Horatio]    How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have took 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 […]

HAMLET         What man dost thou dig it for? GRAVEDIGGER          For no man, sir. HAMLET         What woman, then? GRAVEDIGGER          For none, neither. HAMLET         Who is to be buried in’t? GRAVEDIGGER          One that was a woman, sir, but rest her soul she’s dead.   (5.1.122-128) More logic; Hamlet does actually want to know whose grave it is, although […]

HORATIO       Not a jot more, my lord. HAMLET         Is not parchment made of sheepskins? HORATIO       Ay, my lord, and of calves’ skins too. HAMLET         They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose grave’s this, sirrah? GRAVEDIGGER          Mine, sir, [Sings.]          O, a pit of clay for […]

HAMLET         There’s another! Why, may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now – his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks? Why does he suffer this mad knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel and will not tell him of his action of […]

HAMLET         Why, e’en so. And now my Lady Worm’s – chapless and knocked about the mazard 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 loggets with them? Mine ache to think on’t. GRAVEDIGGER (Sings.)         A pickaxe and […]

HAMLET         That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder. This might be the pate of a politician which this ass now o’erreaches – one that would circumvent God, might it not? HORATIO       It might, […]

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 […]