The

gravediggers.

It is with no intention of incivility to Polonius that I speak first of him and then of the Clowns. The matter has arranged itself. Much has been written about these Clowns, and the genius of Shakespeare who could turn two grave-diggers to such grim and spectral ends. They are the only workmen in the play, and they speak with the voice of their class. We learn many things from them that people will talk about their betters though they should hang for it, that there is one Christian law for gentlefolks and another for the commons, that the first gentleman was Adam because he held a spade, that grave-diggers build the strongest houses, that one can sing at grave-making and that grave-makers and liquor are no enemies, that a tanner will last you nine year in the earth, that all Englishmen are mad, and that Hamlet was thirty when Ophelia came to her grave. First Clown is at home in his yard. He plays the host, and welcomes all comers. He has beds for all. He is as shrewd as Hamlet on mortality only the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense'. Hamlet has more language and a quicker pulse, but the slow wisdom of the earth is in the digger of graves. His grossness is the grossness of humanity, which keeps us sane. Hamlet's speculations, if more than momentary, would drive us mad. The wild levity of the thinker and the heavy sanity of the democracy were never more luridly displayed than in this scene among the skulls. Some days later the grave-diggers dug four other graves: a hard day's work. I suppose no one now could guess what they said.

SCENE I.-Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle.

FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO.

Bernardo. Who's there?

Francisco. Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself. Bernardo. Long live the king!

Francisco. Bernardo ?

Bernardo. He.

Francisco. You come most carefully upon your hour. Bernardo. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

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Francisco. For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

Bernardo. Have you had quiet guard?

Francisco.

Bernardo. Well, good-night.

Not a mouse stirring. 10

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,

The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Francisco.

I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?
Enter HORATIO and MARCELLUS.

Horatio. Friends to this ground.
Marcellus.

And liegemen to the Dane. 15

Francisco. Give you good-night.
Marcellus.

Who hath reliev'd you?

Francisco.

Give you good-night.

O! farewell, honest soldier:

Bernardo has my place.

[Exit.

Marcellus.

Holla! Bernardo !

Bernardo. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus Marcellus. What! has this thing appear'd again to-night? Bernardo. I have seen nothing.

Marcellus. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
Horatio. Tush, tush! 'twill not appear.
Bernardo.

And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story,
What we two nights have seen.

Horatio.

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Sit down awhile, 30

Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
Bernardo. Last night of all,

When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one,

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Marcellus. Peace! break thee off; look, where it comes again!

Enter Ghost.

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Bernardo. In the same figure, like the king that's dead. Marcellus. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio. Bernardo. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio. Horatio. Most like it harrows me with fear and wonder.

Bernardo. It would be spoke to.

Marcellus.

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Question it, Horatio. Horatio. What art thou that usurp'st this time of night, Together with that fair and war-like form

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak! Marcellus. It is offended.

Bernardo.

See! it stalks away.

Horatio. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

Marcellus. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

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[Exit Ghost.

Bernardo. How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale :

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

Horatio. Before my God, I might not this believe Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Marcellus.

Is it not like the king?

Horatio. As thou art to thyself:

Such was the very armour he had on

When he the ambitious Norway combated;

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So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

'Tis strange.

Marcellus. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.

But in the gross and scope of my opinion,

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Marcellus. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that

Horatio. In what particular thought to work I know not;

knows,

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Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me ?

Horatio.

At least, the whisper goes so.

That can I;

Our last king, Whose image even but now appear'd to us, Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,

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Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dar'd to the combat ; in which our valiant Hamlet—
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him—
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,

Did forfeit with his life all those his lands
Which he stood seiz'd of, to the conqueror ;
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,

Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,

His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimproved mettle hot and full,

Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

For food and diet, to some enterprise

That hath a stomach in't; which is no other—

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As it doth well appear unto our state

But to recover of us, by strong hand

And terms compulsative, those foresaid lands

So by his father lost. And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,

105

The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.

Bernardo. I think it be no other but e'en so;
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch, so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
Horatio. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.

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But, soft! behold! lo! where it comes again.