Page:A Series of Plays on the Passions Volume 3.pdf/157

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SCENE I.—A burying Vault, almost totally dark; the Monuments and Grave-stones being seen very dimly by the Light of a single Torch, stuck by the side of a deep open Grave, in which a Sexton is discovered, standing leaning on his Mattock, and, above Ground, turning up, with his sheathed Sword, the loose Earth about the Mouth of the Grave.

Mor. There is neither scull nor bone amongst this earth: the ground must have been newly broken up, when that coffin was let down into it.

Sex. So one should think; but the earth here has the quality of consuming whatever is put into it in a marvellous short time.

Mor. Aye; the flesh and more consumable parts of a body; but hath it grinders in its jaws like your carnivorous animal, to cransh up bones and all? I have seen bones on an old field of battle, some hundred years after the action, lying whitened and hard in the sun.

Sex. Well, an't be new ground, I'll warrant ye somebody has paid money enough for such a good tenement as this: I could not wish my own father a better.