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KING. Not that I think you did not love your father;

But that I know love is begun by time;
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,"

Dies in his own too-much: that we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would

changes,

And hath abatements and delays as many

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift* sigh,
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o'the
ulcer:-b

Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake,
To show yourself your father's son in deed
More than in words?

[gether,

LAER. To cut his throat i' the church. KING. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; [Laertes, Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home: We'll put on those shall praise your excellence, And set a double varnish on the fame The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, toAnd wager on your heads: he, being remiss, Most generous, and free from all contriving, Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, Or with a little shuffling, you may choose A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice, Requite him for your father.

d

LAER. I will do't: And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword. I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal, that but dip† a knife in it, Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death.

KING. Let's further think of this; Weigh what convenience both of time and means May fit us to our shape: if this should fail, And that our drift look through our bad performance, "Twere better not assay'd; therefore this project

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LAER. Drown'd!-O, where?

QUEEN. There is a willow grows ascaunt‡a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down the weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up: Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element: but long it could not be, Till that her garments, heavy with their § drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay || To muddy death.

LAER.

Alas, then, is she drown'd? QUEEN. Drown'd, drown'd.

LAER. Too much of water hast thou, poor

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(*) First folio, commings.
(1) First folio, aslant.
() First folio, buy.

e-venom'd stuck,-] "Stuck,"

[Exeunt.

(+) First folio, the.

(§) First folio, her.

(T) First folio, doubts.

tuck, is perhaps used for a

sword; or it may mean a thrust, stoccata.

f How now, sweet queen?] The parallel passage in the 1603 quarto is, "How now Gertred, why looke you heavily?" but all subsequent editions, until the folio of 1632, omit now." 8incapable-] Unsusceptible, unintelligent.

VOL. III.

385

c c

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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,

(*) First folio, an.

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

he that is not gulity of his own death shortens not his own life.(1)

2 CLO. But is this law?

1 Cuo. Ay, marry, is 't; crowner's quest-law. 2 C1.0. 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

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

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2 CLO. Go to.

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

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.b

2 CLO. Marry, now I can tell.

1 CLO. To 't.

2 CLO. Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO at a distance.

1 CLO. 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 gravemaker, the houses that he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor. [Exit 2 Clown.

1 Clown digs and sings.

In youth, when I did love, did love,(2)
Methought it was very sweet,

To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove
O, methought there was nothing 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.

HAM. 'T is e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

1 Clown sings.

But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath caught me in his clutch,

And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a skull.

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 unharness."

c 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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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.

(*) First folio, It. (†) First folio, o're offices. "might be a misunderstood stage-direction for the 1 Clown to yawn;"! he now accepts the emendation of his annotator, 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

HAM. They are sheep, and calves that seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow : -Whose grave's this, sir?

1 CLO. Mine, sir.

Sings.] 0, 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? 1 CLO. Cannot you 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 folie, heeles of our.

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.

HAM. Whose was it?

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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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