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ROSENCRANTZ. None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest. HAMLET. Then is doomsday near. But your news is not true. Let me question more in particular. What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? GUILDENSTERN. Prison, my lord? HAMLET. Denmark’s a prison. ROSENCRANTZ. Then is the world one. HAMLET. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst. ROSENCRANTZ. We think not so, my lord. 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. HAMLET. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you. And sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come; nay, speak. GUILDENSTERN. What should we say, my lord? HAMLET. Why, anything. But to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen have sent for you. ROSENCRANTZ. To what end, my lord? HAMLET. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no.