Today’s Totally Random
Lines
Give
me leave. 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.
First Clown
Hamlet Act V, Scene i, Line 20
Okay, at first
glance this looks hard, but let’s not dive into it willy nilly, and perhaps we’ll
see that it’s not all that difficult. First let’s look at the context. Why they’re
listed as First and Second Clown I’ll never know, but the two guys talking are
gravediggers digging a grave. They’re in a churchyard cemetery and they’re
discussing the fact that they’re digging a grave here for someone who drowned
themselves, namely Ophelia. At issue is the fact that someone who committed suicide
cannot be buried in hallowed ground. The First Clown/Gravedigger is being a
little silly and trying to say that the maybe Ophelia is not guilty of suicide.
More importantly though, he’s giving us the idiom willy nilly.
And that’s our
takeaway: willy nilly. I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming.
1 comment:
First, love the sketch.
Second, I was inferring that one who kills themselves is cutting their life shorter than it needs to be. Whereas someone who dies by any other means is dying exactly when they ought to.
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