In the churchyard at Elsinore two men were digging a grave. As they
worked they talked, and the elder one expounded the law to his young
assistant. The former asked if the person for whom they were digging
the grave was to be buried in Christian burial.
“I tell thee she is,” said the second man, “and therefore make her
grave straight; the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian
burial.”
“How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own defence?”
argued the first grave-digger.
“Why, ’tis found so,” answered the second.
“Here lies the point,” persisted the first, who dearly loved an
argument. “If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act
hath three branches--it is to act, to do, and to perform; argal, she
drowned herself unwittingly.”
“Nay, but hear you, good man delver----”
“Give me leave,” interposed the other, with his air of superiority.
“Here lies the water--good; here stands the man--good; if the man
go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he
goes--mark you that. But if the water come to him and drown him, he
drowns not himself; argal, he that is not guilty of his own death
shortens not his own life.”
“But is this law?” asked the second rustic, rubbing his bewildered
pate.
“Ay, marry, is it; crowner’s quest law,” returned the other decisively.
Having sufficiently impressed his companion by his display of
superior knowledge, the first grave-digger despatched him for “a stoup
of liquor,” and continued his toil alone, singing to himself as he did
so.
Two newcomers had in the meanwhile entered the churchyard. These
were Hamlet and Horatio. Hamlet was struck by the utter insensibility
of the man, who callously pursued his mournful task, and shovelled
earth and human bones alike aside with the most complete indifference.
To Hamlet the sight of these poor human remains awakened many
reflections, and, in his usual fashion, he began to ponder over them,
and speculate what had formerly been the destiny--possibly a brilliant
and distinguished one--of the skulls which were now knocked about so
disrespectfully. Presently he spoke to the man, and asked whose grave
he was digging, and with the exercise of much patient good-humour was
at last able to extract the information that it was for “one that was
a woman, but, rest her soul, she’s dead.”
“How long have you been a grave-digger?” was his next question.
“Of all the days in the year, I came to it that day that our last King
Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.”
“How long is that since?”
“Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that,” was the civil
answer. “It was the very day young Hamlet was born--he that is mad,
and sent into England.”
“Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?” inquired Hamlet.
“Why, because he was mad; he shall recover his wits there; or if he do
not, it’s no great matter there.”
“Why?”
“It will not be seen in him there, there the men are as mad as he.”
“How came he mad?”
“Very strangely, they say.”
“How ‘strangely’?”
“Faith, e’en with losing his wits.”
“Upon what ground?”
“Why, here in Denmark,” said the rustic, misunderstanding the
question. “I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.”
He next threw up with his spade a skull, which he said had been that
of Yorick, the King’s jester.
“Let me see,” said Hamlet, taking it gently into his hands. “Alas,
poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite jest, of most
excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times. Here
hung the lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your
jibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that
were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own
grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and
tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come;
make her laugh at that.”
Hamlet’s meditations were interrupted by the arrival of the funeral
procession, which now entered the churchyard. After the bier walked
Laertes, as chief mourner, and the King and Queen followed, with their
attendants. Hamlet and Horatio, who had retired on the approach of
the mourners, did not at first know who was about to be buried, but
when the bier was lowered into the grave, Hamlet knew from the words
spoken by Laertes that it was no other than the fair Ophelia.
“Sweets to the sweet: farewell!” said the Queen, scattering flowers.
“I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy
bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, and not have strewed thy grave.”
“Hold off the earth awhile, till I have caught her once more in my
arms,” cried Laertes; and, leaping into the grave, he shouted wildly
to them to pile their dust on the living and the dead.
“What is he whose grief bears such an emphasis?” cried Hamlet, coming
forward. “This is I, Hamlet the Dane.” And he, too, leaped into the
grave.
At the sight of the young Prince, all Laertes’s wrath blazed up in
full fury. He sprang on him, and grappled with him, almost throttling
him. Hamlet, thus attacked, bade Laertes hold off his hand, for though
not hot-tempered and rash, yet he had something dangerous in him which
it would be wise to fear. The attendants parted the incensed young
men, and they came out of the grave, but they still regarded each
other with looks of defiance.
“Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, until my eyelids will no
longer wag,” said Hamlet.
“O my son, what theme?” asked the Queen.
“I loved Ophelia,” said Hamlet; “forty thousand brothers could not,
with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.”
In Laertes’s own style of exaggeration, Hamlet hurled forth a fiery
challenge, and then, with sudden self-contempt, he ended in half-sad
irony:
“Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou.”
The next day Hamlet and Horatio were walking in the hall of the
castle, when a very elegant and affected young Danish nobleman
approached, and, with many bows and flourishes, delivered his message,
which was a challenge from Laertes to a fencing match. The King had
laid a heavy wager on Hamlet--six Barbary horses against six French
rapiers and poniards, that in a dozen passes Laertes would not exceed
Hamlet three hits.
“Sir, I will walk here in the hall,” answered Hamlet; “if it please
his Majesty, it is the breathing-time of day with me. Let the foils be
brought, the gentleman willing; if the King hold his purpose, I will
win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the
odd hits.”
“You will lose this wager, my lord,” said Horatio, when young Osric,
with a final sweeping bow of his plumed cap, had retired.
“I do not think so,” said Hamlet. “Since he went into France I have
been in continual practice. I shall win at the odds.--But thou wouldst
not think how ill all’s here about my heart; but it is no matter.”
“Nay, good my lord----”
“It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would
perhaps trouble a woman.”
“If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will go and tell them you
are not fit.”
“Not a whit; we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall
of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it
will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all:
since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?
Let be.”
Now entered the King and Queen, Laertes, Osric, and other lords;
attendants with foils and gauntlets; and servants carrying a table
with flagons of wine on it.
“Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me,” said the King,
putting Laertes’s hand into Hamlet’s.
With his customary sweetness of disposition, Hamlet courteously
apologised to Laertes for any wrong he might have done him, saying
that it was only due to the excitement of the moment. Laertes accepted
his offered friendship, but with little grace. Then the foils were
brought, and while Hamlet, utterly unsuspicious, made his choice,
Laertes, with some shuffling, managed to secure the foil he wanted,
with the button off, and anointed its point with venom.
The King ordered the goblets of wine to be set in readiness, and
commanded that if Hamlet gave the first or second hit a salute should
be fired from the guns on the battlements. Then, with hypocritical
friendliness, he pretended, in honour of Hamlet, to drop a pearl of
great value into the goblet, but it was in reality some deadly poison.
At first the fencers seemed pretty evenly matched, but Hamlet secured
the first hit. The King drank to his health, the trumpets sounded, and
cannon were fired outside. The King sent a little page with the cup of
wine to Hamlet, but the Prince said he would play the next bout first,
and bade the boy set it by awhile. Again they played.
“Another hit! What say you?” Hamlet appealed to the judges.
“A touch, a touch, I do confess,” agreed Laertes.
“Our son shall win,” said the deceitful King.
“The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet,” said his mother.
“Gertrude, do not drink,” said the King, but it was too late; before
Claudius could prevent her, she had lifted to her lips the cup of
poisoned wine, which the little page had placed on a table beside her.
The third bout of fencing began, and this time it was more vigorous
than before, for Hamlet reproached Laertes for not putting forth his
full powers. A feeling of shame had doubtless hitherto restrained
Laertes, and he felt that what he was going to do was almost against
his conscience. Nevertheless, he now thrust in good earnest. He
wounded Hamlet, but in the scuffle his rapier flew out of his hand.
Hamlet tossed his own weapon to Laertes, and picked up the poisoned
one which had fallen to the ground. The struggle was resumed, and this
time Hamlet wounded Laertes. The match begun in play was becoming
serious.
“Part them; they are incensed!” cried the King.
“Nay, come again,” said Hamlet.
“Look to the Queen there, ho!” called out Osric, for at that moment
she fell back, half unconscious.
“They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?” asked Horatio of
Hamlet.
“How is it, Laertes?” asked Osric.
“Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly punished
with mine own treachery.”
“How does the Queen?” asked Hamlet.
“She swoons to see them bleed,” said the King, anxious to cover up the
cause of her death.
“No, no, the drink, the drink!” gasped the Queen, “O my dear
Hamlet--the drink, the drink! I am poisoned!”
“O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked! Treachery! Seek it out,”
cried Hamlet.
Laertes, on the point of death, confessed the whole plot, and Hamlet,
stung at last to vengeance, stabbed the wicked King with Laertes’s
poisoned weapon, which he held in his hand.
“He is justly served,” said Laertes. “Exchange forgiveness with me,
noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, nor thine
on me.”
“Heaven make thee free of it!” said Hamlet, as the young man fell back
motionless. “I follow thee. I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!”
Horatio, feeling that he no longer cared to live, seized the cup, and
would have drunk off what was left of the poisoned wine, but with a
last effort of failing strength, Hamlet wrenched the cup out of his
hands, and dashed it to the ground.
Far off in the distance was heard the music of a triumphant march,
and learning that it was the youthful Fortinbras, returning with
conquest from Poland, Hamlet prophesied that he would be elected as
the new King, and gave his dying voice for him as his successor.
Then murmuring, “The rest is silence,” the young Prince sank quietly
back, with a smile of unearthly radiance on his face, and at last the
storm-tossed spirit was at peace.
“Now cracks a noble heart,” said Horatio in loving farewell.
“Good-night, sweet Prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy
rest!”