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[Enter two Gravediggers with spades and picks.]

First Gravedigger

Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that willfully seeks 
her own salvation?     

Second Gravedigger

I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight.
The crowner has sat on her, and finds it Christian
burial.

First Gravedigger 

How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own 
defense?

Second Gravedigger

Why, 'tis found so.

First Gravedigger 

It must be so offendendo, it cannot be else. For here lies    
the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, 
and an act has three branches: it is an act, to do, and to
perform. Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.    

Second Gravedigger   

Was he a gentleman?

First Gravedigger   

He was the first that ever bore arms.

Second Gravedigger   

Why, he had none.

First Gravedigger 

Why, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the
Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could    
he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee.
If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself.    

First Gravedigger 

Why, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the
Scripture? The Scripture says Adam digged. Could    
he dig without arms? I'll put another question to thee.
If thou answerest me not to the purpose, confess thyself.    

Second Gravedigger   

Go to.

First Gravedigger

What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, 
the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Second Gravedigger

The gallows-maker, for that frame outlives a thousand
tenants.

Second Gravedigger

Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a carpenter?

First Gravedigger   

Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.    

Second Gravedigger   

Marry, now I can tell.

First Gravedigger   

To't.

Second Gravedigger   

Mass, I cannot tell.

First Gravedigger

Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass 
will not mend his pace with beating; and when you    
are asked this question next, say "a grave-maker." The
houses he makes lasts till doomsday. Go, get thee to

First Gravedigger   

      But age with his stealing steps 
      Has caught me in his clutch,
      And has shipped me into the land,
      As if I had never been such.
[He throws 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 it were Cain's
jawbone that did the first murder! It might be the pate of
a politician, which this ass now o'er-offices, one that
would circumvent God, might it not?

Hamlet

There's another. Why may not that be the skull of 
a lawyer? Where be his quiddits now? His quillets? His
cases? His tenures, and his tricks? 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 th' inheritor
himself have no more? Ha.

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.

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