“My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts,” said Rosencrantz.
“Why did you laugh, then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?”
Rosencrantz answered that he was only thinking, if Hamlet delighted not in man, what sorry entertainment the band of players would receive, whom they had overtaken on the way to Elsinore.
Hamlet replied that they would all be welcome, and asked what players they were.
“Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city,” answered Rosencrantz.
Hamlet’s interest was at once aroused, and he was discussing the subject of the players, and the reason why they were forced to travel, instead of keeping to their old position in the city, when a flourish of trumpets announced they had arrived. Before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left him, Hamlet spoke a parting word to them.
“Gentlemen, you are welcome,” he said courteously. “Your hands, come then”—for they would merely have bowed respectfully. “You are welcome; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.”
“In what, my dear lord?” asked Guildenstern.
“I am but mad north-north-west,” said Hamlet gravely: “when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
Hamlet’s speech may or may not have puzzled the young men to whom it was addressed, but, all the same, it was excellent good sense, and meant that he was in full possession of his faculties. His metaphor was taken from the old sport of hawking; the word “handsaw” is a local corruption for “heron.” The heron, when pursued, flew with the wind; therefore when the wind was from the north it flew towards the south; as the sun is in this quarter during the morning (when the sport generally took place), it would be difficult to distinguish the two birds when looking towards this dazzling light. On the other hand, when the wind was southerly, the heron flew towards the north, and, with his back to the sun, the spectator could easily tell which was the hawk and which was the heron.