Original Text
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Modern Text
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Enter a GRAVEDIGGER and the
OTHER gravedigger
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A GRAVEDIGGER and the
OTHER gravedigger enter.
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GRAVEDIGGER
Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she willfully
seeks her own salvation?
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GRAVEDIGGER
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OTHER
I tell thee she is. Therefore make her grave straight. The
crowner hath sat on her and finds it Christian burial.
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OTHER
I’m telling you, yes. So finish that grave right away.
The coroner examined her case and says it should be a Christian
funeral.
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GRAVEDIGGER
How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own
defense?
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GRAVEDIGGER
But how, unless she drowned in self-defense?
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OTHER
Why, ’tis found so.
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OTHER
That’s what they’re saying she did.
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GRAVEDIGGER
It must be se offendendo. It cannot
be else. For here lies
the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act. And an
act hath three branches—it is to act, to do, to
perform.
Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.
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GRAVEDIGGER
Sounds more like “self-offense,” if you ask
me. What I’m saying is, if she knew she was drowning
herself, then that’s an act. An act has three sides to
it: to do, to act, and to perform. Therefore she must have known she
was drowning herself.
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OTHER
Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver—
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OTHER
No, listen here, gravedigger sir—
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GRAVEDIGGER
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.
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GRAVEDIGGER
Let me finish. Here’s the water, right? And
here’s a man, okay? If the man goes into the water and
drowns himself, he’s the one doing it, like it or not.
But if the water comes to him and drowns him, then he
doesn’t drown himself. Therefore, he who is innocent of
his own death does not shorten his own life.
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OTHER
But is this law?
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OTHER
Is that how the law sees it?
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