Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii - The Fishmonger Scene

LORD POLONIUS

    O, give me leave: How does my good Lord Hamlet?

HAMLET

    Well, God-a-mercy.

LORD POLONIUS

    Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET

    Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

LORD POLONIUS

    Not I, my lord.

HAMLET

    Then I would you were so honest a man.

LORD POLONIUS

    Honest, my lord!

HAMLET

    Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

LORD POLONIUS

    That's very true, my lord.

HAMLET

    For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter?

LORD POLONIUS

    I have, my lord.

HAMLET

    Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to 't.

LORD POLONIUS

    [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.

    What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET

    Words, words, words.

LORD POLONIUS

    What is the matter, my lord?

HAMLET

    Between who?

LORD POLONIUS

    I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

HAMLET

    Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward.

LORD POLONIUS

    [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

HAMLET

    Into my grave.

LORD POLONIUS

    Indeed, that is out o' the air.

    [Aside] How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter.--My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.

HAMLET

    You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.

LORD POLONIUS

    Fare you well, my lord.

HAMLET

    These tedious old fools!

(For further analysis and discussions of the differences and choices in some of these, I recommend the excellent Hyperion to a Satyr blog's section on this sequence.)