Act V, Scene 1
[Line 90]
HORATIO
Ay, my lord.
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 it.
Did these bones cost no more the breeding
But to play at loggets with them?
Mine ache to think on it!
GRAVEDIGGER [Sings]
A pickax and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding sheet,
O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
[GRAVEDIGGER digs up more skulls.]
HAMLET
There’s another. Why may not that be
Th’ skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now,
His quillities, 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 battery?
Hum, this fellow might be in his 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 scarecely lie in this box—
And must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
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.
[To the GRAVEDIGGER] Who’s grave’s this, sirrah?
GRAVEDIGGER Mine, sir.
[Sings] O, a pit of clay for to be made
For such a guest is meet.
HAMLET
I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in it.
GRAVEDIGGER
You lie out on it, sir, and therefore
‘Tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in it,
Yet it is mine.
HAMLET
Thou dost lie in it, to be in it
And say it is thine.
‘Tis for the dead, not for the quick;
Therefore, thou liest.
[Line 130]