TEXT:
HAMLET
Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he
sings at grave-making?
HORATIO
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
HAMLET
'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath
the daintier sense.
First Clown
[Sings]
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
Throws up a skull
HAMLET
That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once:
how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were
Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder! It
might be the pate of a politician, which this ass
now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God,
might it not?
HORATIO
It might, my lord.
HAMLET
Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow,
sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might
be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord
such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not?
HORATIO
Ay, my lord.
NOTES:
Cain and Abel
In the book of Genesis in the Bible, Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain was a farmer, Abel a shepherd. When both brothers made sacrifices to God, He preferred Abel's offering, and Cain killed him. This was the first murder, and Abel, therefore, the 'first corpse' mentioned in this episode's portion of the text. Cain was thereafter punished with a lifetime of wandering, and with 'the mark of Cain', a sign from God that prevented anyone from killing him - perhaps as a warning not to commit his sin again. As the story was told in Medieval Mystery Plays, Cain killed Abel with the jawbone of an ass.
Pate
Not to be confused with the French word for paste, pâté, pate is a (now old-fashioned) word for one’s head.
Borrowing Horses
In the text here, Hamlet is suggesting an image of one courtier borrowing another’s horse - or asking for it outright. One of the most famous lines given to Richard III in the play that bears his name is “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” - he famously fell off his horse during the battle that ended his reign. Meanwhile, a little after Hamlet, Shakespeare writes of other dainty folk horse-trading in Timon of Athens. In a clear example of the largesse that has bought him all too many false friends, Timon insists on giving a beautiful horse to a random lord simply because he has expressed interest in it:
TIMON
And now I remember, my lord, you gave
Good words the other day of a bay courser
I rode on: it is yours, because you liked it.
Timon of Athens, Act I, scene ii.
(If you’d like to learn more about the play, the Book Club episode devoted to it is here.)