The quick and the dead

For other uses, see The Quick and the Dead (disambiguation).

The quick and the dead is an English phrase used in the paraphrase of the Creed in the Medieval Lay Folks Mass Book and is found in William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament (1526), "I testifie therfore before god and before the lorde Iesu Christ which shall iudge quicke and deed at his aperynge in his kyngdom" [2 Tim 4:1], and used by Thomas Cranmer in his translation of the Nicene Creed and Apostles' Creed for the first Book of Common Prayer (1540). In the following century the idiom was used both by Shakespeare's Hamlet (1603) and the King James Bible (1611). More recently the final verse of The Book of Mormon (first published in 1830), mentions "...the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead".

Etymology

The use of the word quick in this context is an archaic one, specifically meaning living or alive; therefore, this idiom concerns 'the living and the dead'. The meaning of "quick" in this way is still retained in various common phrases, such as the "quick" of the fingernails, and in the idiom quickening, as the moment in pregnancy when fetal movements are first felt.) Another common phrase, "cut to the quick", literally means cut through the dead, unfeeling layers of the skin to the living, sensitive tissues below. Quicksilver, an old name for the liquid metal mercury, refers to the way droplets of mercury run around and quiver as if alive. It is derived from the Proto-Germanic *kwikwaz, which in turn was from a variant of the Proto-Indo-European form *g^wih₃wos – "lively, alive", from the root *g^weih₃ – "(to) live" (from which also comes the Latin vivere and later the Italian and Spanish viva, and whose root is retained in the English words revive and survive). The English meaning of "quick" in later centuries shifted to "fast", "rapid", "moving, or able to move, with speed".

In the King James Bible

The phrase is found in three passages in the 1611 King James Bible: in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10:42), Paul's letters to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1), and the First Epistle of Peter. The last reads: "For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead".

This passage advises the reader of the perils of following outsiders in not obeying God's will. Specifically it warns that those who sin, both the quick and the dead, will be judged by Jesus Christ. In other words, it implies that God is able to act on the sins of a person whether that person is alive (quick) or has passed into the afterlife (dead).

Shakespeare's Hamlet

This phrase occurs in Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, when Ophelia's brother, Laertes, at the burial of his sister, Ophelia, asks the gravedigger to hold off throwing earth onto Ophelia's body and jumps into her grave and says, "Now pile your dust upon the quick and the dead . . . " (line 5.1.240). Laertes is "quick" (i.e., alive), and Ophelia is dead. The scene dramatizes the extreme passion of Laertes. A play on the expression comes earlier in the same scene, when Hamlet asks a gravedigger whose grave is being dug, and the gravedigger, designated as CLOWN, uses a pun on the word, "lie," and playfully evades Hamlet's question. Hamlet's reply includes the line, "'tis for the dead, not for the quick . . ." (line 5.1.118).

The poignance of the expression is that it comes from Christian tradition that Christ will judge "the quick and the dead," and because Ophelia's death by drowning is "doubtful," according to the priest at the interment. Was her death an accident or suicide? The priest thinks she should not have a Christian burial, but apparently the King overruled that judgment, so she is given a partial Christian burial. According to the report of her death given by the Queen, Ophelia "fell" into the stream, but because of her insanity, she kept singing strange songs and didn't try to save herself.

In the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds

In the Nicene Creed the phrase appears in the following passage (taken from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer):

[He] ascended into heaven,

And sitteth on the right hand of the Father.

And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.

In the Apostles' Creed the phrase appears in the following passage (also from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer):

He ascended into heaven,

And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Emin Pasha Relief Expedition

"Between the Quick and the Dead" (Punch magazine, 22 November 1890, depicts a British officer imploring the figure of Justice beside the graves of the army officer Edmund Musgrave Barttelot and the naturalist James Sligo Jameson, over their roles in the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.

Further information: Emin Pasha Relief Expedition

The 1887 to 1889 Emin Pasha Relief Expedition became notorious for causing the deaths of many of its members and for its reported brutality. The conduct of two of its members, the army officer Edmund Musgrave Barttelot and the naturalist James Sligo Jameson, is thought to have led Joseph Conrad to create the brutal character Kurtz in his 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. The same two members featured in a cartoon in Punch magazine in 1890, showing a living British officer imploring the figure of Justice beside the two men's graves, under the caption "Between the Quick and the Dead".

In literature and film

Several novels and films have been made using the idiom as their title, including a 1963 war film by Robert Totten, a 1978 documentary about motor racing, and a 1987 television film by Robert Day based on a 1973 novel by Louis L'Amour.

Sam Raimi's 1995 film The Quick and the Dead tells the story of a female gunfighter who rides into a frontier town and joins a deadly duelling competition to seek revenge for her father's death.

External links

• "Future History Series 03 - The Roads Must Roll (English) (Robert A. Heinlein)". Cento Historias del Mundo. February 27, 2016. Retrieved September 2, 2016.