Hamlet; the Noir Adaption 2023 Act 5 Scene 1 Sub Scene 3

 Act Five

Act Five Scene One

Sub Scene Three

Who lies there, Mr.Gravedigger?

“Is not parchment made of sheepskins?” Hamlet spied the parchment in the gravedigger’s hand.

“Ay, my lord, and of calves’ skins too.” Horatio saw it too.

They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I will speak to this fellow.—” Horatio approached the gravedigger. “Whose grave’s this, sirrah?”

“Heaven protects me! Who are thee to sneak up on me here? In the graveyard and silent were your steps?”

“Horatio of ..Elsinore. I chanced by here and asked.” Horatio introduced himself. I am with my …. Friend here.”

“Elsinore? Yup should have known. I have seen the new digs.” Albert knew of the guards there. He once told Castella, dig that one and you may find some values if any left, or shed the suit to sell if none.

“This plot is mine …for now. We are digging it for a new …guest.” Albert smiled. “We respect them like royalty too.”

Sings. O, a pit of clay to be made
For such a guest is meet.

Albert sang from his selection of songs.

“I think it is thine indeed, for thou liest in ’t.” Hamlet made a jest at the gravedigger. \

“You lie out on ’t, sir, and therefore ’tis not yours. For my part, I do not lie in ’t, yet it is mine.” Albert took offense to the jest.

“Thou dost lie in ’t, to be in ’t and say it is thine. Tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.” Hamlet said that the gravedigger was in the hole, hence it must belong to him.

“Tis a quick lie, sir; ’twill away again from me to you. A twist here in the facts, sir.” Albert smiled,

“What man dost thou dig it for?” Hamlet moved the conversation forward and inquire about the grave.

“For no man, sir,” Albert replied.

“ What woman then?” Hamlet asked.

“For none, neither,” Albert replied. “One that was a woman, sir, but, rests her soul, she’s dead. Not naturally but dead. Not like the others with gasping breaths, they had been interned.”

That last line was directed at Horatio to say nit all that he buried were dead then.

“How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.” Hamlet was exasperated by the gravedigger’s replies. He wants a precise reply to his question. He is the lord after all.

“By the Lord, Horatio, this three years I have taken note of it: the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.” Hamlet felt the servants or peasants were brave to stand as equal with the lordship.

Horatio looked away. Hamlet may be alike his father; aloft in his view as the so-claimed royalty, yet beneath the clothes, they were all alike.

“How long hast thou been, grave-maker?” Hamlet asked,

“Gravedigger, Sire. I am not a maker. Thine must not cross our roles, or ghosts may be alive like us.” Albert replied. “Or are you one of those? They said you only can come out at nightfall.”

“I am not. I am a living soul, night and day.” Hamlet declared himself.

“Sane or none, I yet to know,” Horatio muttered to himself lest he is heard by Hamlet.

“Of all the days i’ th’ year, I came to ’t that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras. I was there with him.” Albert smiled.

“How long is that since?” Hamlet asked.

“Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was that very day that young Hamlet was born—he that is mad and sent to England. As I am told by the castle servants. I am an ingrate to live far from it, but I have my own abode.”

Horatio wanted to intervene on Albert but Hamlet pressed on.

“Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? This young Hamlet?”

“Why, because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there. So says the Emperor, Or if he do not, ’tis no great
matter there. He will not return.” Albert continued.

“Why?” Hamlet asked.

“This not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.” Albert whispered to Hamlet. “Madness in the castle.”

“How came he mad?” Hamlet was intrigued by the servants’ talk.

“Very strangely, they say. Not like my cousin Jack, he was born that way.:

“How “strangely?” Hamlet felt Horatio’s hand on him, and he shrugged it off.

“Faith, e’en with losing his wits,” Albert replied.

“Upon what ground?” Hamlet asked.

“Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years. I have seen it all; sane, madness, the innocent and guilty ones.” Albert smiled. “All dead. Or soon to be. I came to ’t that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.”

“How long will a man lie i’ th’ earth ere he rot?” Hamlet moved the topic.

“Faith, if he is not rotten before he dies, he will last you some eight or nine years. A tanner will last you nine
year.”

“Why he more than another?” Hamlet queried,

“Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade that he will keep out water a great while, and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’ th’ earth three-and-twenty years.”

“Whose was it? And why dug him out?” Hamlet asked,

“A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. He had decayed and his plot will go to the non-deserving one. She died unnaturally. Let her lain here in a used plot.” Albert replied to the second question before he turn to the first. “The skull you asked of whom? Let me see. Whose do you think it was?”

“Nay, I know not.” Hamlet shrugged his shoulders.

“A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. Humiliated me in front of friends.  This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.” Albert recognized the hollow cheeks.

“This?” Hamlet took the skull “Let me see. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.”

“Where be your gibes 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 grinning? Quite chapfallen?” Hamlet recalled the jester who was the aide to the King. He had played pranks on Hamlet when younger.

“Yorick will make fun of me. He will say, ‘Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.’ I disliked him yet loved him for his rides.”

“Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.” Hamlet displayed a smile.

“What’s that, my lord?” Horatio looked at Hamlet. The smile put him on a caution.

“Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ th’ earth?” Hamlet raised a madness question.

“E’en so.” Horatio nodded. He was unsure of how to reply.

“And smelt so? Pah!” Hamlet puts the skull down.

“E’en so, my lord.” A safe answer then.

“To what base uses we may return, Horatio!” Hamlet was all reflecting on the mortality of one. “Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till….”

“Large to stopping a bunghole perhaps?” Hamlet pictured the skull as Alexander’s may have blocked the passage in the sewers if reaches there.

“Twere to consider too curiously to consider so.” Horatio patronizes his lord.

“No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither, with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it, as thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel?” Hamlet was in the throes of madness once more. “Imperious Caesar for one, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. The Romans or Egyptian may have dug his remains from ashes to make clay and into the sewers as the passage flows.”

“O, that that earth which kept the world in awe Should patch a wall t’ expel the winter’s flaw!” Hamlet was ranting in madness then.

Horatio saw the burial entourage were arriving.