Page 346 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

HAMLET

Why, e’en so, and now my Lady Worm’s, chopless, and knocked about the
mazard with a sexton’s spade. Here’s fine revolution and we had the trick to
see’t. Did these bones cost no more the [90] breeding but to play at loggets

with ’em? Mine ache to think on’t.

GRAVE.

[Sings] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,
For and a shrouding-sheet,
O a pit of clay for to be made
For suck a guest is meet. [95]

[Throws up another skull.]

HAMLET

There’s another. Why, may not that be the 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 [100] 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 [105] 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 scarcely lie in this box, and must th’inheritor himself have no more,
ha? [110]

HORATIO
Not a jot more, my lord.

HAMLET

Is not parchment made of sheepskins?

HORATIO

Ay, my lord, and of calveskins too.

HAMLET
They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to