Hamlet

believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for 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’ the 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 honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.


Hamlet
You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.


Polonius
Fare you well, my lord.


Hamlet
These tedious old fools!



Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.


Polonius
You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is.


Rosencrantz
To Polonius. God save you, sir! Exit Polonius.


Guildenstern
My honoured lord!


Rosencrantz
My most dear lord!


Hamlet
My excellent 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 favours?


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’ the 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 nut-shell 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 the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.


Rosencrantz

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.


Guildenstern
What should we say, my lord?


Hamlet
Why, any thing, but to the 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
Aside to Guildenstern. What say you?


Hamlet
Aside. 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—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; 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 firmament, 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 humourous man shall end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickled o’ the sere; and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse