“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.