                 Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

  Pol. Fare you well, my lord.
  Ham. These tedious old fools!
  Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.
  Ros. [to Polonius] God save you, sir!
                                                Exit [Polonius].
  Guil. My honour'd 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 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' 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.
