Scene 4 of Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Enter two Clowns, with spades and pickaxes.
Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
A churchyard
Gravediggers unearth Yorick's skull; Ophelia's burial; Hamlet declares his love
[Enter two Clowns, with spades and pickaxes.]
Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?
I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight. The crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial.
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?
Why, 'tis found so.
It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches—it is to act, to do, and to perform. Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
But is this law?
Ay, marry, is't—crowner's quest law.
[Enter Hamlet and Horatio, afar off.]
Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings in grave-making?
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if 'twere Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches, one that would circumvent God, might it not?
[The Gravedigger throws up another skull.]
Whose was it?
A whoreson mad fellow's it was. Whose do you think it was?
Nay, I know not.
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's jester.
This?
E'en that.
[Hamlet takes the skull.]
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.
To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
'Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!
[Enter King, Queen, Laertes, and a coffin, with Lords attendant and a Doctor of Divinity.]
What ceremony else?
Her obsequies have been as far enlarged as we have warranty. Her death was doubtful, and, but that great command o'ersways the order, she should in ground unsanctified been lodged till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers, shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her. Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, her maiden strewments, and the bringing home of bell and burial.
I tell thee, churlish priest, a minist'ring angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling.
What, the fair Ophelia!
Sweets to the sweet! Farewell. I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife. I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.
[Laertes leaps into the grave.]
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?
[Exeunt.]
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