“Believe me, I cannot.”
“I do beseech you.”
“I know no touch of it, my lord.”
“’Tis as easy as lying,” said Hamlet. “Govern these holes with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.”
“But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill,” declared Guildenstern.
“Why, look you, how unworthy a thing you would make of me!” said Hamlet, his persuasive voice changing to sudden sternness. “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet you cannot make it speak. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?—Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”
The pipe snapped in his slender fingers, as he tossed it contemptuously away, and the two young men stood crestfallen and abashed before his noble scorn.
It was no repentant and shamefaced son that entered the Queen’s room that night. Hamlet had steeled his heart to do what he considered his duty, and tell his mother the truth. He would speak daggers, though he used none; he would reveal to her the true character of the man she had taken for her second husband. When, therefore, the Queen, in accordance with Polonius’s advice, began to take him roundly to task for his strange behaviour, he retorted in such a strange, and even menacing, manner that she was quite alarmed, and shouted for help. Polonius, hidden behind the arras, echoed her cry. Hamlet, thinking it was the King, and that the hour for vengeance had come, drew his sword.
“How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!” he exclaimed, and made a pass through the arras.