GUILDENSTERN Happy, in that we are not ever happy.
On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
HAMLET Nor the soles of her shoe.
ROSENCRANTZ Neither, my lord.
HAMLET Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours.
GUILDENSTERN Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true – she is a strumpet. What news?
ROSENCRANTZ None, my lord, but the world’s grown honest.
HAMLET Then is doomsday near – but your news is not true. But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore?
ROSENCRANTZ To visit you, my lord, no other occasion. (2.2.223-236)
Banter! Guildenstern going for it more strenuously than Rosencrantz, a bit? Oh, you know, we are happy in that we are not ever happy. Doing OK, on balance, not winning every trick, but, OK; happy here is fortunate, as his qualification makes clear: on Fortune’s cap we are not the very button. Not tip top, not quite riding high. (They can be a bit shabby, frayed around the edges.) Nor the soles of her shoe: Hamlet joins in, you’re not rock bottom though, are you? (One of the undercurrents that this can make visible, depending on how wary and suspicious Hamlet is being from the off, is whether Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are visibly in need of money, and so willing to be paid by Claudius, or bribed.) Rosencrantz perhaps realises the dangers of this implication: neither, my lord. Neither a peak nor a trough. Hamlet relents, perhaps, retreats into familiar bawdry: then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? As far as Lady Fortune goes, then, you’re right in there, eh? Guildenstern’s eager, unsubtle: faith, her privates we. We’re totally in, her servants, and also, well, you know. Wahey. Hamlet pushes again (or it can just be a moment of being gratefully back in the groove of familiar banter with the boys, rather than him getting their measure, testing, probing; or both). In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true—she is a strumpet. Fortune’s a whore, inconstant, promiscuous, selling herself to the highest bidder, or not even the highest. I’m a victim of Fortune’s inconstancy, Hamlet’s partly saying, but there’s potential for a steely undercurrent too: who’s paying you? And a switch: what news? Tell me what’s going on.
There can be just the beat of a glance at Rosencrantz—or an obvious, determined not a glance—before Guildenstern tries to bring it back to bantz: none, my lord, but the world’s grown honest. Just kidding! Then is doomsday near: the world honest? that’s a sign of imminent apocalypse. But your news is not true (steel again); the world is anything but honest. (That key word.) Hamlet relents, again, sort of: but, in the beaten way of friendship—we’re old mates, right, so, no beating about the bush?—what make you at Elsinore? What are you doing here? It’s been years, we’ve hardly been in touch at all, and now you just—show up? Rosencrantz has to strike the right note, not protest too much, and he doesn’t quite manage it: to visit you, my lord, no other occasion. We just wanted to see our old mate Hamlet, we don’t need any other reason than that, do we?