Page 345 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

meet.

[While he is singing,] enter Hamlet and Horatio.

HAMLET
Has this fellow no feeling of his business a [65] sings in grave-making?

HORATIO
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

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

GRAVE.
[Sings] But age with his stealing steps [70]

Hath claw’d me in his clutch,
And hath shipp’d me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
He trows up a skull.

HAMLET
That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to

th’ ground, as if [75] ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder. This
might be the pate of a politician which this ass now o’er-offices, one that
would circumvent God, might it not?

HORATIO
It might, my lord. [80]

HAMLET
Or of a courtier, which could say, ‘Good morrow, sweet lord. How dost thou,

sweet lord?’ This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that praised my Lord Such-a-
one’s horse when a meant to beg it, might it not? [85]

HORATIO
Ay, my lord.