Hamlet is a pretty good straight man. He knows how to feed the clown his set-ups. I don’t think that is definitely what is going on here – but I do think that Hamlet has a comic sense and an ability to enjoy others’ comic sense and provide the necessary prompts to get the full effect of a joke. I mean, he does not have to ask “Why?” He could just let that statement roll on by but instead he asks and gets us all to the punchline.

This is actually a pretty smart question. It might seem to be just part of the vaudeville routine – but it’s a pretty clever fact finding inquiry, too. Like – what is the story that’s gone out about why Hamlet’s been sent to England? What is the propaganda that Claudius has put out? What are people saying?

Probably, before cameras, royals could conceivably walk around in relative anonymity if they wanted to. Just take off your crown and you have an instant cloak of relative invisibility. I mean, we see Henry the V do it in that play. Here Hamlet can play dumb about basic Denmark facts and presumably the grave-maker is none the wiser.
How would he recognize a prince? By his portrait? Probably not in person. There not being much call for the overlapping of gravemakers and princes usually.
There are no photos, no videos – just paintings and drawings and engravings, which, no matter how artful, don’t necessarily make their way to the eyes of the people.
I think if I were a royal, I’d take great solace in being able to throw off my royalty for a moment and just wander as a human. I’d probably also have to be a male royal to make that really work, though – as ladies didn’t have quite the freedom of movement that I’d find optimal. Maybe, if I had been a queen, I’d have periodically dressed as a man to go out exploring.

Now we say gravedigger. This scene is often referred to as the gravedigger scene – the characters Gravedigger 1 and 2.
But a gravedigger was once called a gravemaker. Every instance of the profession here is a gravemaker. It feels, too, as though in transforming from gravemaker to gravedigger, the job has lost a bit of status. One who makes is more respected than one who digs. There is a sense of craft in a maker – a digger is almost a machine.

Even though the action is essentially the same – a grave is made by digging after all – gravemaking seems a much more solemn activity than gravedigging. There may be a sense of the sacred in a gravemaker – a sanctification of the earth, a tending to the space. Even in the jokes these gravemakers bandy back and forth there is a sense of a grave as a house, a home for someone, built to last.

When did we move from gravemakers to gravediggers? And why?

The note on Genius says that galls his kibe is scraping his heel blister. It’s a very visceral way to say this. Where I’m from, we call this giving someone a flat tire. But irritating someone’s heel blister is so much more wretched. Also – is “kibe” truly the word for heel blister? Was this such an epidemic that there was a specific word for it? Were the shoes so bad? The heels so chafing? Was a kibe a permanent fixture of a foot?
Things to be grateful for in the modern age. #1023

This is a rather curious specificity time-wise. What in the world has happened in the last three years? Or in Shakespeare’s London?
The major events in the past in this play happened in a matter of months, not years. Is there some movement toward democratization afoot? Three years ago, someone began printing text for the masses that removed the major barriers of learning? Is that it? Is it that Hamlet’s been at school for three years? I mean – if he is at a four year university that might make sense time wise.
It is a very curious time frame.

In some contexts, it does feel as though everyone has been given a card that tells them exactly what to say and when. They all have a seemingly prescribed set of topics and responses and any deviation from those will be noted and generate demerits for the deviant.
In a way, it might be easier to actually have a card than to try and guess what the parameters are in each new group.

My friend told me about her brother-in-law who seems to not understand jokes at all, even the simplest, most obvious ones. She finds herself making even more jokes than she might have otherwise, because his behavior is so baffling.

I would absolutely do the same. When I encounter someone as literal as my friend’s brother-in-law, I become a compulsive joke maker – somehow convinced it is my delivery not his absolute-ness. It’s a recipe for feeling very foolish when, in fact, the failure is on the part of the guy who didn’t get the joke.

What if, at our birth, we were also given our grave? Like – you welcome a child by preparing its place in the earth. You can go and visit your grave throughout your life, know where you will finally stop, where you will end up. Not when, of course. But where. I wonder how that would impact one’s life – to be that acutely aware of your death. Perhaps it’s like that for people who had family graveyards or mausoleums or for church officials who knew they’d be buried in the churchyard. It’s not quite like knowing the exact spot. But it might be pretty close – to just see the end and the beginning simultaneously.

Hamlet thinks he’s got this game figured out.
Oh. It’s not a man…I see you’re splitting hairs about whomever this grave is for.
Ah ha! Must be a woman then. Of course.
I love that the gravedigger will not let him win. No one else in this play can match Hamlet with his language games. But this gravedigger can.