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[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.

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

Pol.
Fare you well, my lord.

Ham.
These tedious old fools!

[Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

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

Ros.
[To Polonius.] God save you, sir!

[Exit Polonius.]

Guil.
My honoured lord!

Ros.
My most dear lord!

Ham.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,
Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?

Ros.
As the indifferent children of the earth.

Guil.
Happy in that we are not over-happy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button.

Ham.
Nor the soles of her shoe?

Ros.
Neither, my lord.

Ham.
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her
favours?

Guil.
Faith, her privates we.

Ham.
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a
strumpet. What's the news?

Ros.
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

Ham.
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?

Guil.
Prison, my lord!

Ham.
Denmark's a prison.

Ros.
Then is the world one.

Ham.
A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and
dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

Ros.
We think not so, my lord.

Ham.
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.

Ros.
Why, then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your
mind.

Ham.
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.

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

Ham.
A dream itself is but a shadow.

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

Ham.
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch'd
heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my
fay, I cannot reason.

Ros. and Guild.
We'll wait upon you.

Ham.
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?

Ros.
To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.

Ham.
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.

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