Faith, her privates we.

HAM. In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet. What news?

ROS. None, my lord, but 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, deserv'd 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' th' 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 th' court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

BOTH [ROS., GUIL.] 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. Were you not sent for? is it your own inclining? is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal justly with me. Come, come – nay, speak.

GUIL. What should we say, my lord?

HAM.