HAMLET.
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.
ROSENCRANTZ.
Why, then your ambition makes it one; ’tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET.
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.
GUILDENSTERN.
Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET.
A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ.
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
HAMLET.
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.
ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.
We’ll wait upon you.
HAMLET.
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?
ROSENCRANTZ.
To visit you, my lord, no other occasion.