A flourish

GUILDENSTERN        There are the players!

HAMLET         Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come, then! Th’appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb lest my extent to the players, which I tell you must show fairly outwards, should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

GUILDENSTERN        In what, my dear lord?

HAMLET         I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.           (2.2.306-316)

Trumpets! (or whatever production-appropriate sound might signal an arrival.) There are the players! says Guildenstern, perhaps childishly excited, but also relieved, because this conversation has been WAY stickier than he and Rosencrantz had ever imagined and they could do with the distraction and a chance to regroup. Hamlet definitely has the upper hand; a moment of formal but friendly courtesy, gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come, then! Shake on it! there could be hugs, back-slaps, temporarily papering over the wariness on both sides. Th’appurtenance of welcome—that which is appropriate to it—is fashion and ceremony, so, GUYS, great to see you, yes? Let me comply with you in this garb—give you all the signs of a warm welcome—lest my extent to the players, the welcome which I am about to offer the players, which I tell you must show fairly outwards—it’ll be enthusiastic!—should more appear like entertainment than yours. Don’t you think for a moment that I’m more pleased to see them than I am to see you! You are welcome. No, really. (And at this point the shine is coming off slightly; Hamlet knows how to do sarcastic special pleading.)

But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are much deceived. (If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern think that Hamlet had softened, let down his guard even slightly, they’re much mistaken; he’s as ascerbic and pointed as ever, with this insulting, incestuous name-calling.) They haven’t got a clue, my so-called ‘parents’. Guildenstern bites: in what, my dear lord? (Nothing to be said in response to uncle-father and aunt-mother, of course, just pretend he didn’t say it.) I am but mad north-north-west. Some of the time I’m completely sane! It’s only when the wind’s blowing from that direction—or, I’m only a few degrees off from the true north of sanity. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw; sometimes—most of the time, even—I’m completely in control of my wits, and I know what’s going on. And yes a handsaw might be an archaic word for a heron but without a flashing footnote it just sounds daft, a thing that is as unlike a hawk as possible so of course you can tell the difference. The point is, how will you know, if or when I’m mad or sane? The point is, I know what you’re up to, old friends.