First, the indicative statements: “Here lies the water . . . Here stands the man” convey a tone redolent of courtroom proceedings. Evidence is established, “here lies” the water and the man, followed by conditionals that lead to the illogically based conclusion that if one prematurely ends one's own life, then one is guilty of committing suicide. Notice, in particular, the word “guilty”, which can be taken in both the legal and moral sense. This satirical treatment of ecclesiastical law serves as a call-back joke to the previous conflation of Christian doctrine with the legal system: “she drowned herself in her own defense?”, and further throws into sharp relief the arbitrary nature of the doctrine's condemnation of suicide. A willful act, “if the man goes to [the] water”, is enough to mark a death as suicide; the substance of the joke of course being that only the deceased will ever truly know whether or not their act was intentional or “willful”, meaning that to condemn anyone of committing suicide is in itself based on logically shaky grounds.
A more transparent pun follows shortly:
Here, “arms” is a pun on both the heraldic coat of arms and physical appendages. “Hold up” stands as a precursor to this pun, raising connotations of physical support, as perhaps with one's arms, and piques awareness for the dual meanings that follow.
The last line of the gravedigger's joke reveals yet another misinterpretation of Scripture: nowhere in Scripture does it say that “Adam digged”. Perhaps Shakespeare himself was unaware of the actual words of Genesis, which state that Adam “was put in the garden 'to dress and to keep it'”, with no explicit mention of “digging”. Looking back at the last line, however, confirms that the word “Scripture” is used twice in total, suggesting that Shakespeare is forcing the point: the gravedigger, as a most likely uneducated rustic, interprets Scripture according to his own inferences, and that by and large people in general tend to interpret Scripture to suit their own personal agendas. This subtle joke intermingles both theories of laughter: those in the know about Scripture may find the gravedigger's hasty interpretation comical, arising from their superior knowledge of theology, and for everyone else the preceding pun may incite laughter from the simple incongruity of word meanings.
Similar to many rites of passage during which pain is endured for the eventual pleasure of initiation, there is a piquant mixture of pleasure and pain, of comedy and tragedy, in the gravedigger's escapades. By inciting laughter in the melancholic atmosphere of a funeral day, the gravedigger casts off conventional identity and uses wordplay and satire to challenge Scriptural interpretations, bringing a new light to religious doctrine by airing taboo topics.
