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HAMLET How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the126
card, or equivocation127 will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it: the age is grown so
picked129 that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heels of our courtier, he galls his kibe130.-- How long hast thou been a grave-maker?
FIRST CLOWN Of all the days i'th'year, I came to't that day that our last king Hamlet o'ercame Fortinbras.
HAMLET How long is that since?
FIRST CLOWN Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born -- he that was
mad and sent into England.
HAMLET Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
FIRST CLOWN Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there, or if he do not, it's no great matter there.
HAMLET Why?
FIRST CLOWN 'Twill not be seen in him: there the men are as mad as he.
HAMLET How came he mad?
FIRST CLOWN Very strangely, they say.
HAMLET How strangely?
FIRST CLOWN Faith, e'en with losing his wits.
HAMLET Upon what ground148?
FIRST CLOWN Why, here in Denmark: I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.
HAMLET How long will a man lie i'th'earth ere he rot?
FIRST CLOWN I'faith, if he be not rotten before he die -- as we have many pocky corpses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the153
laying in -- he will last you some eight year or nine year: a
tanner155 will last you nine year.
HAMLET Why he more than another?
FIRST CLOWN Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out water a great while, and your water is a sore
decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here's a skull159 now: this skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.
HAMLET Whose was it?
FIRST CLOWN A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?
HAMLET Nay, I know not.
FIRST CLOWN A165 pestilence on him for a mad rogue! A poured a flagon of Rhenish166 on my head once. This same skull, sir, this same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.
HAMLET This?
FIRST CLOWN E'en that.
