QUEEN Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you
And sure I am two men there is not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expend your time with us awhile
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits a king’s remembrance. (2.2.19-26)
It’s difficult not to be anachronistic here, to think about young people’s relationships and how much they can change. (And yes, how old is Hamlet anyway?) Gertrude’s intervention is less loaded than Claudius’s, and more anxious and hopeful; she’s really invested in this. Good gentlemen, he hath much talked of you and sure I am two men there is not living to whom he more adheres. Gertrude knows these two, they’re Danes, and she assumes that they’re still as close to Hamlet as when they were all younger, that their intimacy has continued now that Hamlet is away at university—whether they too are in Wittenberg, it’s never made clear—or whether they’re still in Denmark. One could imagine that Hamlet has much talked of them when asked by his mother, how are the boys getting on, how are your old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern these days? The answer could be, implicitly, I don’t really see much of them any more. (The missing person here is Horatio, clearly Hamlet’s closest friend now, and not part of the same circle, or perhaps even known to Gertrude; there’s no suggestion that R & G are ‘scholars’, even if they’re imagined as students.) The depth of Gertrude’s anxiety is shown in her pleading: if it would please you to show us so much gentry and good will as to expend your time with us a while for the supply and profit of our hope: please, please, can you do this? Will you be so good, so kind, so gracious: everything that she says is an extended version of a standard courtesy, but there’s real desperation here, much more so than Claudius. Claudius wants to solve a problem, he doesn’t like unknowns, and he wants to be in control. Gertrude’s worried about her son. Your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance. We’ll make it worth your while, reward you richly—and be so, so grateful. Claudius can offer a reassuring smile: yes, obviously, expenses, and some kind of bonus should everything be completed to our/my satisfaction.