Let her not walk i' th' sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your daughter may conceive, friend, look to't.

POL [Aside.] How say you by that? still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first, 'a said I was a fishmonger. 'A is far gone. And truly in my youth I suff'red much extremity for love – very near this. I'll speak to him again. – What do you read, my lord?

HAM. Words, words, words.

POL. What is the matter, my lord?

HAM. Between who?

POL. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAM. 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.

POL [Aside.] Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. – Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAM. Into my grave.

POL. 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 deliver'd 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.

HAM. You cannot take from me any thing that I will not 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 Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

 

POL. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet, there he is.

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

 

[Exit Polonius.]

 

GUIL. My honor'd lord!

ROS. My most dear lord!

HAM. My [excellent] good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you 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 favors?

GUIL.