HAMLET
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’ the 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 nut shell 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.


The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act 2, Scene 1
by William Shakespeare




Tony Mayo
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