ACT IV
SCENE III. Another room in the Castle.
How now? What hath befall’n?
But where is he?
Without, my lord, guarded, to know your pleasure.
Bring him before us.
Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.
Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
At supper.
At supper? Where?
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.
Alas, alas!
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
What dost thou mean by this?
Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
Where is Polonius?
In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ th’other place yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
[To some Attendants.] Go seek him there.
He will stay till you come.
For England?
Ay, Hamlet.
Good.
So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.
I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.
Thy loving father, Hamlet.
My mother. Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England.
And England, if my love thou hold’st at aught,— As my great power thereof may give thee sense, Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red After the Danish sword, and thy free awe Pays homage to us,—thou mayst not coldly set Our sovereign process, which imports at full, By letters conjuring to that effect, The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England; For like the hectic in my blood he rages, And thou must cure me. Till I know ’tis done, Howe’er my haps, my joys were ne’er begun.