Enter HAMLET, reading. O, give me leave: how does my good Lord Then I would you were so honest a man. POLONIUS. Honest, my lord! HAMLET. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, be one man picked out of ten thousand. is to For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion- Have you a daughter? I have, my lord. POLONIUS. HAMLET. Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing; but as your daughter may conceive,friend, look to 't. POLONIUS. (Aside.) How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.-What do you read, my lord? Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and 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 yourself, sir, shall grow 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? Indeed, that's out of 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. (Down L.) You go to seek the Lord Hamlet; there he is. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both? 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. 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. 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 herces the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the 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. 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. ROSENCRANTZwaang To what end, my lord? |