Adam had a profession, I guess. But not Eve?
According to this speech, Adam gardened, dug ditches and a grave. Eve likely did some of this as well. At least the gardening. And probably more. I don’t know what was going on with those two.
I mean, I guess the story was that life was all just sitting around enjoying stuff until they ate that apple. And then Eve had to have a baby and Adam had to…uh…dig ditches? And then Adam got a profession while Eve had to look after those kids – And what was once a sensible division of labor got turned into some weird codified way of being – some ingrained rules about professionalism and male-ness along with sacrifice/punishment and femaleness?
I’d like to talk about Eve’s profession next time.

Yet another insightful bit of social commentary from the “clown.”
Class is a social construction.
There were no gentlemen in ancient times – not for a good long while.
In a small growing society, there is no need for a separation.
Everyone is a worker at the beginning.

This line just made me post my first ever annotation on the Genius website. I have often liked a post or even voted something down. But – I’ve never been moved to contribute before. In this case, I just couldn’t let it stand that this line could only mean “Come my fellow gravedigger.” I mean – sure – that’s a possibility but it’s also the least practical, the most of a stretch. In my experience with Shakespeare, the best solution is often the simplest, most elegant, most logical.
What’s more logical here? For the gravedigger to want his fellow gravedigger to come or to be handed his spade or even to speak to the spade itself before he uses it.
I’m not saying he’s definitely NOT talking to his fellow gravedigger but it is only one possibility of several.

I am embarrassed to say that I have mostly missed this social critique in my many encounters with this play and this scene. Maybe it’s often cut – but it’s darkly funny and terribly sharp. Like, it’s too bad that rich people have more leeway to kill themselves than the poor. I mean – the inequities go all the way up and all the way down to the grave.
I have taught this play to dozens of classes of young people who are not inexperienced with income inequality. They might have really appreciated the proposition that rich people get more rope to hang themselves than the poor if I had thought to direct them to this section. But no, I probably cut it to make it easier to say.

Tracking the switches between thee/thou and you in this scene is a bit of a whirlwind. This scene only started a few lines ago and we’re already switched back and forth. We started at thee, switched to you and are now back at thou.
This very much supports my notion that this scene is a status battle.

Previously, I really only saw the joke of calling a coroner a crowner. Hey – these guys are dumb! Or have an exceptionally colorful dialect! Either way – funny stuff! But I have a comedy mind. So I will often see the joke before I see something else. Now – though – the sense of a crowner is much richer than just a funny way to say coroner. A king is a crowner. He crowns his heir and his wife – a long line of crowns. And with the divine right of kings – a crowner might also be God. God is your only king-maker. Your only crownmaker. And so on. With the simple (mis)pronunciation joke, the crowner’s quest is like the coroner’s inquest or question. But a King’s quest is a different law entirely. And a God’s quest even more so.

I just finished reading Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus in which the clowns fare rather badly. I’m not sure what Carter has against clowns but she pretty much killed them all off, including their dogs. I love Carter’s writing but the dark take on the clowns ruffled my feathers a bit. (So to speak – you might find that last line funny if you’ve read the book.) First, her clowns were more buffon than clown. They traveled in packs like buffon. They could be satirical. They had a real mean streak. They were grotesque.

Second, as a clown, I take a small amount of exception to the fact that a novice performer can be thrown in with the clowns and become expert immediately.

Third, what kinds of clowns never take off their make-up? Answer – magical realist ones of course. But – still.
Anyway – the sole surviving clown (who is, granted, not truly a clown) begins to speak a bit like this toward the end of the book.

There is a bit of an epidemic of this in my generation – the men, shortening their own lives like this – though I don’t see them as guilty.

There must be something that has made things impossibly hard for them – perhaps a sense of being alone, of being locked into a toxic masculinity while recognizing its toxicity- but unable to shake it off. I don’t know – but right now it’s being discussed as an epidemic of the suicides of middle aged men.

With the right special effects, it might be possible for a body of water to pull itself from its bed and into the shape of a man or animal – then walk a good distance and drown someone.

Mark is a funny name.
It is both a verb and a noun and a name. It’s funny that way.
Are there other names that are both verbs and nouns and common names?