Enter HAMLET .

GERTRUDE    But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.

POLONIUS      Away, I do beseech you both, away.

I’ll board him presently. O, give me leave. (Exeunt CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE.)

How does my good lord Hamlet?

HAMLET                                 Well, God-a-mercy.

POLONIUS      Do you know me, my lord?

HAMLET         Excellent well, you are a fishmonger.

POLONIUS      Not I, my lord.

HAMLET         Then I would you were so honest a man.

POLONIUS      Honest, my lord?

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

POLONIUS      That’s very true, my lord.     (2.2.165-177)

But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading: here he is, my poor boy, says Gertrude, always his nose in a book. (There’s no way of knowing what the book is; the idea that an audience might identify a book by its cover is impossible c.1600. In modern dress there’s scope for comedy or pointedness if it’s a recognisable book, or if it’s upside-down. Machiavelli, say, or Mao, or Marvel.) Polonius goes into bossy, fussy mode: away, I do beseech you both, away. (And Ophelia has to be bundled out if she’s been present in the scene.) I’ll board him presently, get on with this immediately, see what’s what. O, give me leave; is that alright by you? good, fine, go. Exit the King and Queen, Gertrude perhaps particularly uneasy, anxious, Claudius amused, but also wary.

How does my good lord Hamlet? Polonius can be obsequious but also avuncular: how are you doing, son? Well, God-a-mercy. Hello, thank you for asking, fancy seeing you here. Do you know me, my lord? Polonius is testing Hamlet’s mental state, how many fingers am I holding up, who’s the PM is coming next, but he’s starting with the basics. Does Hamlet know where he is, can he recognise people he sees every day? Oh, excellent well, you are a fishmonger. Absolutely I know who you are. It’s an easy laugh, puncturing Polonius’s pomposity as well as keeping up the madness; editors sometimes want fishmonger to mean bawd, pimp, by analogy with a seller of (sexual) flesh. Polonius has, after all, just been referring to his daughter as a pawn, to be used as bait. Not I, my lord. Mmmm, no? Then I would you were so honest a man: even if you’re not an actual fishmonger, then I wish you were as honest as a fishmonger. (No idea whether fishmongers were proverbially honest. Probably not. What matters is the implication that Polonius is dishonest.) Honest, my lord? Polonius can be baffled; he can also be playing along, trying to keep Hamlet talking. Ay, sir, to be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Honesty: it’s a pretty rare commodity these days. That’s very true, my lord; Polonius cannot but agree, and this sententious moralising, odd though it is in the circumstances, is the sort of language that he speaks.

Honesty is of course moot here in many senses. Hamlet has decided in 1.5 that it is an honest ghost, that he believes the story of his father’s murder. He therefore knows that Claudius is dishonest, and suspects that his mother may be too; honest has a particular sexual sense, of chastity, continence. He himself is being dishonest in his assumption of the antic disposition—which may, given his mental state, have a kind of honesty to it too. And Polonius has just proposed something dishonest, sending Ophelia to confront Hamlet in order to watch and listen to the encounter covertly.