LEGO Hamlet – Act 5, Scene 1, Part 1

The Tragedy of LEGO Hamlet, Prince of Denmark – Act 5, Scene 1 – Part 1

Enter HAMLET and HORATIA, at a distance

HAMLET
‘Tis e’en so: the hand of little employment hath
the daintier sense.

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

HAMLET
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! It
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
now o’er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
might it not?

HORATIA
It might, my lord.

HAMLET
Or of a courtier; which could say ‘Good morrow,
sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?’ This might
be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord
such-a-one’s horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?

HORATIA
Ay, my lord.

HAMLET
Why, e’en so: and now my Lady Worm’s; chapless, and
knocked 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 loggats with ’em? mine ache to think on’t.

GRAVEDIGGER
[Sings]
A pick-axe, 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.

HAMLET
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?

HORATIA
Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET
I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t.

GRAVEDIGGER
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.

HAMLET
‘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.

GRAVEDIGGER
‘Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away gain, from me to
you.

HAMLET
How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the
card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord,
Horatia, these three years I have taken a note of
it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the
peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he
gaffs his kibe.

HAMLET
Why?

GRAVEDIGGER
‘Twill, a not be seen in him there; there the men
are as mad as he.

HAMLET
How came he mad?

GRAVEDIGGER
Very strangely, they say.

HAMLET
How strangely?

GRAVEDIGGER
Faith, e’en with losing his wits.

HAMLET
Upon what ground?

GRAVEDIGGER
Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man
and boy, thirty years.

HAMLET
How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?

GRAVEDIGGER
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.

HAMLET
Why he more than another?

GRAVEDIGGER
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.

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.