I think I always assumed this was a FAST lie but now that I’m looking at, I’m not entirely sure what a fast lie would be. I suppose one that slips easily from one’s lips without any forethought or planning. But we are in a graveyard here. It is not a place for the quick, as in the living – but it IS a place for talk of the quick. Nothing reminds the living of their own state of aliveness than being surrounded by the dead. Surrounded by the dead. Surrounded by the living, a person might think, “Am I dead?” but surrounded by the dead, you know you’re alive.

So I wonder now if a quick lie might not so much be a fast lie as a living lie. Or both. It’s probably both. Shakespeare is known for that sort of thing.

If you dig it, it is yours – no matter who lies in it after. Or perhaps it changes ownership once a body is laid in a grave? It starts as the maker’s and shifts to the body’s once it has been covered over. The hole, now filled, no longer belongs to the hole maker.

I’ve rarely heard this line spoken in such a way that gave it anything but a sort of “I know you are but when am I?” quality.
But looking at it now – it’s got a sense of – splitting hairs about location. Hamlet accuses the gravedigger of lying in the grave. The gravedigger accuses Hamlet of lying outside of it – which confirms its ownership, at least in the negative.
Also – the status of the characters is immediately obvious to both of them. Hamlet delivers a sirrah, an informal address and the gravedigger gives back a You. He doesn’t know who Hamlet is but he knows he should be using formal speech with him.

It would be kind of cool if we were actually made of clay. If we broke a finger or an arm, we could just go in to a human sculptor and they could mold us a new one and just smooth it into the socket. I imagine we’d be a little simpler – our symptoms would be easier to diagnose if we were made of only one material.

But then – we would likely be simpler in thought, too, if we were made of solid clay. Our thoughts would be clay. Our emotions – clay. Our imaginations – only clay.

My friend likes to point out that communists must have not spent any time with children or they would have known it could never really work. It is pretty remarkable how embedded the impulse to ownership can be. To watch children lay claim to things, to see them scramble for mine, mine, mine – it does kind of make sense that true communism is hard to make work.

Another thing about clay – aside from being a sort of dirt that’s good for putting dead people in the ground – is that clay really can help with the smell.
If you’re burying a decomposing body, a place that helps reduce odors is a really good idea. They put clay in natural deodorant – why wouldn’t you put your smelly decaying dead guest in a clay pit? It’s a great way to reduce body odor.

I’d totally listen to a gravedigger’s mix-tape. I’d love to hear more songs about pick-axes and spades and shrouding sheets. I fear that this one is one of the few but I would so love to hear all the gravedigger’s work songs.

I guess no one of us really sees age coming until he has us in his clutch. My 40s caught me entirely by surprise. I thought I would be 30 forever. I thought I was 30 for years before I was 30, since my childhood, really, when I was continually horrified by the indignities of childhood. So since I was basically always 30, I found turning 30 to be quite a relief – like, finally, I am the age I’ve always felt myself to be. And all the numbers following thirty were still just thirty, just varieties of 30. But forty! My god I was not prepared. Not at all.

And now I am confronted with all the things that start to happen with age – medical tests that seemed so far in the future, a cloak of invisibility on the street, the way I don’t look my age in the exact reverse I used to get in my teens. I used to look older, now I look younger.
And even though I am likely to be in the exact middle of my life, I start to consider the end in a way that I never did before. I have a tab open on my browser to remind me to write a will. So…yeah. Age suddenly has me in his clutch. He will likely be my constant companion now for the second half of my life.

This song that the gravedigger sings is based on poem called “The Aged Lover Renounceth Love” by Second Baron Vaux of Harrowden Thomas, Lord Vaux. I wish we could get a copy of the Billboard Hot 100 charts of the Renaissance to find out if there was indeed a popular song of the times based on this poem. Two verses hew pretty close to the poem but the third is tailored to the gravedigger – it’s almost a parody verse. I suspect that would be all the funnier if the audience knew the song.
Like, if the gravedigger sang two normal verses of “Don’t Stop Believin’” and then added one about gravediggers.

Ah yes – and here’s where knowing other plays comes in a bit handy. Because Sir Toby Belch calls for a stoup of wine – and this makes me see the clown/gravedigger in relationship to Sir Toby. Perhaps they might have been played by the same actor.

Stoup isn’t used much in the plays – it is here, with a “drunken lout” in 12th Night and two villains in the plays, Iago and, later in this play, Claudius.

I wonder if there’s some association to be made between these characters who share a common word usage. Certainly Hamlet sees Claudius as a bit of a drunken relative when he observes the drinking revel ritual early in the play.