Enter POLONIUS.

POLONIUS      Well be with you, gentlemen.

HAMLET         Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too – at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts.

ROSENCRANTZ         Happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child.

HAMLET         I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it. – You say right, sir, o’Monday morning, ’twas then indeed.

POLONIUS      My lord, I have news to tell you.

HAMLET         My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in Rome –

POLONIUS      The actors are come hither, my lord.

HAMLET         Buzz, buzz.

POLONIUS      Upon my honour.

HAMLET         – Then came each actor on his ass.  (2.2.317-332)

This long, long scene has so many movements: Polonius now back again, bustling, formal, in control (he hopes): well be with you, gentlemen. Hamlet ignores him, and obviously he’s going to side with his so-called friends (on the grounds of youth and wit) against him, through mockery and baiting. Hark you, Guildenstern, and you too—at each ear a hearer. Just you listen to this, just you wait; stand close. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts. Listen to me run rings around him, make a fool of him—treat him like a child. (Polonius is the play’s only—living—father. The swaddling clouts, bands of cloth that Hamlet cruelly invokes fleetingly recall the graveclothes that the Ghost of his own father has burst out of.) Rosencrantz can play this game, with some relief, the shared mockery of an easy target: happily he is the second time come to them, for they say an old man is twice a child. Yeah, yeah, I know this one, old men are in their second childhood!

I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Just you wait and see, it’s the officious sort of thing he loves, no news is real news unless he’s the one to bring it. Mark it. And then Hamlet pretends—perhaps hammily obviously—that he’s having a conversation with Guildenstern and Rosencrantz about something else, that Polonius is interrupting: you say right, sir, o’Monday morning, ’twas then indeed. Polonius does exactly as expected—my lord, I have news to tell you—and Hamlet’s reply can either be that stalwart of playground bullying/defiance, an exact imitation of the intonations, my lord, I have news to tell you, or else a surprised rejoinder with different emphasis: what a coincidence, my lord I have news to tell you. I’ll go first. When Roscius was an actor at Rome (the implication is that this is the sort of news that Polonius might be expected to bring, a tired old classical reference, albeit one about acting, enough to disconcert Polonius with its appropriateness, if he notices). (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can snigger, sycophantically, perhaps also uneasy at Hamlet’s evident sharpness and speed of uptake.) Polonius isn’t having it, cuts across: the actors are come hither, my lord. Buzz, buzz. So what, stale, borrrrring! Call that news? Upon my honour: Polonius can be offended both by the implication that it’s not true and, even more, by Hamlet’s rudeness. Hamlet continues: then came each actor on his ass; it’s as if he’s continuing his earlier observation about Roscius, unimpeded. Ass can be arse and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can snigger; this is the kind of banter they follow and understand.