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The three old chums meet. Hamlet pretends that he has some trouble distinguishing Rosencrantz from Guldenstern, but this is an inside joke, playing off the general difficulty people have telling one from the other, as though they are twins.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz!
Hamlet, if only for a precious moment, loses his dour mood and his dark meditations, finding himself suddenly thrown back on the joy of old friends and good times, recalling the mood when the world was young and innocent, or when he was anyway. The three roughhouse and pummel each other. After this “puppyish brawl” Hamlet resumes the dialogue:
Good lads, how do ye both?
Which kicks off a bit of ribald drollery:
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.
This friendly frolic strikes a sour note for Hamlet, calling him back to the threatening reality that he lives in under Claudius’s treacherous court. Hamlet catches a whiff of something foul. Polonius is a fishmonger, and it seems that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are fishy friends. The world’s grown honest, indeed!
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.
Texas must be an even worse confine, but in any case, Hamlet now sees that he and his friends are not on the same side, that they are more Claudius’s men now rather than his friends.
Rosencrantz, while trying to maintain an air of friendly whimsy, probes Hamlet further, trying to pluck his mystery and “receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.” And the jousting is not so puppyish anymore.
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.
[Is this the friends’ way of trying to gently nudge Hamlet away from any frustrated ambition that he may have for the crown?]
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.
Hamlet is no shadow, though he is feeling marginalized and vulnerable in his position, unsure and lost as to how to exact vengeance and justice, even as Claudius is obviously pressing in on him. Hamlet begins to stalk off, and we will cut from the action here.
My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz!
Hamlet, if only for a precious moment, loses his dour mood and his dark meditations, finding himself suddenly thrown back on the joy of old friends and good times, recalling the mood when the world was young and innocent, or when he was anyway. The three roughhouse and pummel each other. After this “puppyish brawl” Hamlet resumes the dialogue:
Good lads, how do ye both?
Which kicks off a bit of ribald drollery:
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.
This friendly frolic strikes a sour note for Hamlet, calling him back to the threatening reality that he lives in under Claudius’s treacherous court. Hamlet catches a whiff of something foul. Polonius is a fishmonger, and it seems that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are fishy friends. The world’s grown honest, indeed!
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.
Texas must be an even worse confine, but in any case, Hamlet now sees that he and his friends are not on the same side, that they are more Claudius’s men now rather than his friends.
Rosencrantz, while trying to maintain an air of friendly whimsy, probes Hamlet further, trying to pluck his mystery and “receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.” And the jousting is not so puppyish anymore.
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.
[Is this the friends’ way of trying to gently nudge Hamlet away from any frustrated ambition that he may have for the crown?]
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.
Hamlet is no shadow, though he is feeling marginalized and vulnerable in his position, unsure and lost as to how to exact vengeance and justice, even as Claudius is obviously pressing in on him. Hamlet begins to stalk off, and we will cut from the action here.
