doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoop of liquor. [Exit 2 Clown. [Sings.] In youth, when I did love, did love, [Digging.] Methought, it was very sweet, To contract, O! the time, for, ah! my behove O, methought, there was nothing meet.R 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. 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense. 1 Clo. [Sings.] But age, with his stealing steps, And hath shipp'd me intill the land, [Throws up a Skull. Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, 8 The original ballad from whence these stanzas are taken is printed in Tottel's Miscellany, or Songes and Sonnettes by Lord Surrey and others, 1575. The ballad is attributed to Lord Vaux, and is printed by Dr. Percy in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The ohs and the ahs are caused by the forcible emission of the digger's breath at each stroke of the mattock. The original runs thus: "I lothe that I did love, In youth that I thought swete: "For age with stealing steps VOL. X. Hath claude me with his crowch; 30 which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not? Hor. It might, my lord. Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say, "Goodmorrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?" This might be my lord such-a-one, that prais'd my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not? Hor. Ay, my lord. Ham. Why, e'en so; and now my lady Worm's;" chapless, and knock'd about the mazzard 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 10 with 'em? mine ache to think on't. 1 Clo. [Sings.] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet:11 O! a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. [Throws up another Skull. Ham. There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets,1 his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? 9 The skull that was my lord such-a-one's is now my lady worm's. 10 Loggets are small logs or pieces of wood. Hence loggets was the name of an ancient rustic game, wherein a stake was fixed in the ground at which loggets were thrown; in short, a ruder kind of quoit play. 11 This is another stanza from the same ballad quoted in note 8. "For and," says Mr. Dyce, “in the present version of the stanza, answers to And eke in that given by Percy." So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle: "Your squire doth come, and with him comes the lady, for and the Squire of Damsels, as I take it." And in Middleton's Fair Quarrel: "A hippocrene, a tweak, for and a fucus." 12 H. Quiddits are quirks, or subtle questions; and quillets are nice and frivolous distinctions. The etymology of this last fool. why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce 13 with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! 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? Hor. Not a jot more, my lord. Ham. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins? 15 Ham. They are sheep, and calves, which seek out assurance in that." I will speak to this fellow.Whose grave's this, sir? ish word has plagued many learned heads. Blount, in his Glossography, clearly points out quodlibet as the origin of it. Bishop Wilkins calls a quillet "a frivolousness." 13 Sconce was not unfrequently used for head. - The quartos have "mad knave." In this speech, the folio has several other slight variations from the quartos; in which we follow the former. H. 14 Shakespeare here is profuse of his legal learning. Ritson, a lawyer, shall interpret for him: "A recovery with double voucher, is the one usually suffered, and is so called from two persons being successively voucher, or called upon to warrant the tenant's title. Both fines and recoveries are fictions of law, used to convert an estate tail into a fee simple. Statutes are (not acts of parliament) but statutes merchant, and staple, particular modes of recognizance or acknowledgment for securing debts, which thereby become a charge upon the party's land. Statutes and recognizances are constantly mentioned together in the covenants of a purchase deed." 15 A quibble is here implied upon parchment; deeds, which were always written on parchment, being in legal language "common assurances." 1 Clo. Mine, sir. [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, yet it is mine. Ham. Thou dost lie in't, to be in't, and say it is thine 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest. 1 Co. "Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away 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? 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,16 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 overcame For tinbras. Ham. How long is that since? 16 "To speak by the card," is to speak precisely, by rule, or according to a prescribed course. It is a metaphor from the seaman's card or chart by which he guides his course. 17 Picked is curious, over nice. See King John, Act i. sc. 1, note 23. 18 1 Clo. Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that it was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is 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, 'tis no great matter there. Ham. Why? 1 Clo. "Twill not be seen in him there; 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. 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. 'Faith, if he be not rotten before he die, (as we have many pocky corses now-a-days,1o 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 tann'd 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 hath lain you i'the earth three-and-twenty years. 18 By this scene it appears that Hamlet was then thirty years old, and knew Yorick well, who had been dead twenty-three years. And yet in the beginning of the play he is spoken of as one that designed to go back to the university of Wittenburgh. 19 Now-a-days is in the folio only. |
