Is the assurance about being turned into parchment? That we will go on after our slaughter if we can be turned into paper? Or turned into art? Or turned into writing? I think I may be a sheep or calf in this arena. I do find assurance in knowing that some piece of me will live on after me. That I leave behind me a large body of work. Even if no one ever reads it or finds it or enjoys it – I am assured somehow that I labored for something that has meaning to me if no one else. If that makes me a sheep, I’m okay with it.
Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.
One of the nice things about working in Chelsea in Manhattan for a while was the occasional weird surprise, just walking through the neighborhood.
Maybe two years ago, some promotional company took over a whole bar/restaurant and turned it into a pilgrim tavern. Upstairs there were free drinks and food and downstairs, there were craftspeople and displays. I made a cornhusk doll at the cornhusk dollmaking booth.
There was also a parchment expert. He just sat/stood there working a skin and I chatted with him – turns out his family has been making parchment for many generations. It’s a tradition and business that has passed from one family member to the next. It is a peculiar business now – though I imagine parchment was once much more in demand.
Is not parchment made of sheepskins?
Of the many things I am grateful for, in living in the time that I do, the ready availability of paper is not one that occurs to me as often as it should. I mean, I go through a LOT of paper and a lot of that paper is essentially wasted. Part of my writing practice is to just vomit ink on the page for a bit before settling in to write the thing I came for. Part of the reason I am able to achieve a certain amount of prolific-ness (prolifity?) is that I am able to be “wasteful” with paper. If I had to be sure each word I wrote was worth it, there would be a considerable chill on my creativity. I notice it even if I’m running low on paper in a temporary way. If I had to write on parchment, I might never finish anything.
Not a jot more, my lord.
Apparently, jot comes from iota – a word that means “the least part of anything.” The journey of words is so delightful. An i becomes a j and the a disappears but the meaning remains the same.
And the jot takes on another meaning as well – to quickly write something down – so it retains the sense of a little bit of something but becomes an active process of getting the least part of something written down.
and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?
It is funny that our stuff lasts longer than we do. Our paperwork, our trash, our bills and our un-done to do lists will all be left behind.
I suppose some things pass from generation to generation – things like furniture or pictures – but very little lasts more than a few generations.
The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box.
The original sense of conveyance was a document that transferred ownership from one person to another. It is interesting that language has shifted the sense from the document to the movement.
Now a conveyance suggests some transportation. Something as still and inert as a piece of paper can become a moving object.
Also – it is quite extraordinary how many pieces of paper, how many documents a person can acquire in his or her life. If you had to take them with you to the grave, there would be no room for you in it.
Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones, too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures?
Sound, my friends. This passage is a festival of sound. After a world of fine, we have gone to a repetition of vouch, which links quite nicely in sound to purchases.
The rhythm of length and breadth – pairs nicely with a pair of indentures.
This passage isn’t here for meaning, I don’t think – it’s almost a song in response to the gravediggers song. It’s an answer song from Hamlet.
Is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt?
That is a whole lot of fine right there. That is FOUR repetitions of one word within one sentence. That is super much fun to say, too. This line is often cut due to its point being essentially made in previous lines – but this fine repetition is linguistically fun and fine, fine, fine, fine.
This fellow might be in’s time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries.
It is hard not to think of the Real Estate magnate in Chief when reading this line now, in 2017. It is this fellow who thought by his great buying of land and great manipulating of statutes and his great levying of fines and his great bankruptcies that he would great-ify the country of his birth.
And so we are seeing a great bankrupting of the nation. And he will take us all to our graves sooner than we might have gone otherwise.
It’s 2019 now. And all I can say to what I said in 2017 is same-sies, same-sies, same-sies.
Hum!
The exclamation point is a curious choice here. I’d be more inclined to go with a question mark. As in Hum? Hmm? Or even a period. I’m not sure how you’d exclaim Hum!
– unless you’re trying to get someone to hum a tune
– Unless you were an SS Officer trying to cover the sounds of your crimes with the humming of your victims . In that case, Hum! makes a lot of sense.
Here?
Hum.
Not so much.
The Hamlet Project 