POLONIUS I mean the matter you read, my lord.

HAMLET Slanders, sir; for the satirical slave says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber, or plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am—if, like a crab, you could go backward.

POLONIUS (aside) Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.—Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET Into my grave.

POLONIUS Indeed, that is out o’th’ air. (Aside) How pregnant sometimes his replies are! A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.—My lord, I will take my leave of you.

HAMLET You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, my life, my life.

POLONIUS (going) Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET These tedious old fools! ⌈Enter Guildenstern and Rosencrantz⌉

POLONIUS You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.

ROSENCRANTZ God save you, sir.

GUILDENSTERN ⌈to Polonius⌉ Mine honoured lord. ⌈Exit Polonius⌉

ROSENCRANTZ (to Hamlet) My most dear lord.

HAMLET My ex’llent good friends. How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz—good lads, how do ye both?

ROSENCRANTZ

As the indifferent children of the earth.

GUILDENSTERN

Happy in that we are not over-happy,

On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe?

ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.

HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favour?

GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet. What’s the news?

ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest.

HAMLET Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord?

HAMLET Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one.

HAMLET A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’th’ worst.

ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord.

HAMLET Why, then ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

HAMLET A dream itself is but a shadow.

ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

HAMLET Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we to th’ court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason.

ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN We’ll wait upon you.

HAMLET No such matter. I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended. But in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?

ROSENCRANTZ To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.

HAMLET Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you; and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come. Nay, speak. 278

GUILDENSTERN What should we say, my lord?

HAMLET Why, anything—but to th’ purpose. You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you.

ROSENCRANTZ To what end, my lord?

HAMLET That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no.

ROSENCRANTZ (to Guildenstern) What say you?

HAMLET Nay then, I have an eye of you—if you love me, hold not off.

GUILDENSTERN My lord, we were sent for.

HAMLET I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late—but wherefore I know not—tost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

ROSENCRANTZ My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.

HAMLET Why did you laugh, then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?

ROSENCRANTZ To think, my lord, if you delight not in man what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.

HAMLET He that plays the King shall be welcome; his majesty shall have tribute of me. The adventurous Knight shall use his foil and target, the Lover shall not sigh gratis, the Humorous Man shall end his part in peace, the Clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o’th’ sear, and the Lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for’t. What players are they?

ROSENCRANTZ Even those you were wont to take delight in, the tragedians of the city.

HAMLET How chances it they travel? Their residence both in reputation and profit was better both ways.

ROSENCRANTZ I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation.

HAMLET Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city? Are they so followed?

ROSENCRANTZ No, indeed, they are not.

HAMLET How comes it? Do they grow rusty?

ROSENCRANTZ Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace. But there is, sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for’t. These are now the fashion, and so berattle the common stages—so they call them—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.

HAMLET What, are they children? Who maintains ’em? How are they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common players—as it is like most will, if their means are not better—their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim against their own succession?

ROSENCRANTZ Faith, there has been much to-do on both sides, and the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was for a while no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player went to cuffs in the question.

HAMLET Is’t possible?

GUILDENSTERN O, there has been much throwing about of brains.

HAMLET Do the boys carry it away?