The world seems ever more full of liars than ever before and bold-face liars, no less. It starts to feel as though truth itself were under assault, that in the face of such astonishing perfidy, facts and truth and justice might all be submerged in the swamp of mendacity.
‘Tis for the dead, not for the quick.
There is such poetry in the evolution of language. Now, quick means, almost exclusively, rapid. We understand it when paired with the dead, as death’s opposite but we almost never describe the living as the quick anymore. But that is how the word began. To be quick once meant to be alive. That’s it. But because life is brief and flies so quickly – the word began to also mean fast.
And life is so quick that quick no longer means life, it is now pure speed. Quickly, a life, a quickness, evolves into something else entirely.
Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say it is thine.
That is a lot of repetition of “it.” In’t, in’t, it. The assonance is really quite extraordinary, as well. It reminds me of this exercise that my grad school advisor used to do with students. He’d have everyone read their text with the vowels only. It made everyone sound (and feel) ridiculous but occasionally, that sort of pedantic exercise yielded some interesting results. This is a line that might really deliver some juice that way.
For my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine.
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.
You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not yours.
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.
I think it be thine, indeed, for thou liest in’t.
I have trouble understanding how a person could hate puns. I mean, sure, some of them can be groan inducing and ridiculous – but on the whole, they’re harmless and encourage a nice sense of double-ness.
I wonder if that’s the issue. I mean, to enjoy a pun requires a holding of two concepts at once. In this case, it is both lying as in fibbing and lying as in reclining. You have to hold both ideas at once to find such a thing amusing. Or maybe it isn’t so much amusing as pleasurable – it rings a simultaneity bell.
But maybe that simultaneity chime sounds more like a school bell to those who do not enjoy a pun.
I’m curious.
O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet.
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.
Mine, sir.
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.
Whose grave’s this, sirrah?
Is this Hamlet’s way of making conversation? Hey man – who’re you digging the grave for? Not, like, “Hi – you’re a gravedigger, what’s that like?”
I don’t know. It’s a funny question to ask. I’d wager most gravediggers don’t have a sense of who they’re digging graves for. I saw the guys digging my grandmother’s grave and I would bet a lot of money on them not having the slightest idea of who they were digging it for. I would bet that they could tell me its exact location and how deep they were meant to dig it for the box of ashes – but if they even knew her name I would be surprised. More like something like Position Q2 on the Northeast quadrant. That’s more likely.
Granted, my grandmother was buried, alongside my grandfather, in one of the biggest cemeteries in the country but still…I would never assume a gravedigger had knowledge of his grave’s future resident. And I wouldn’t start a conversation there. However – it’s good that Hamlet does, as it allows for some fun wordplay in the midst of a pretty dark tragedy.
I will speak to this fellow.
At Christmas dinner, everyone was talking, with the exception of this one couple. And my dad, who had also not been talking much, reached out to them, to ask them a question. It wasn’t that he needed to know the answer to that question – it was a sort of intentionality of inclusion. It was looking around and seeing who is left out and then making space for them to feel welcomed. The question is an announcement of intention like this. I will speak to this fellow and redirect the conversation which has been headed in many other directions. It is interesting because I don’t tend to think of my dad as being a masterful conversationalist but we all have our little geniuses.
The Hamlet Project 