CLAUDIUS      How fares our cousin Hamlet?

HAMLET         Excellent, i’faith! Of the chameleon’s dish – I eat the air, promise-crammed. You cannot feed capons so.

CLAUDIUS      I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not mine.

HAMLET         No, nor mine now, my lord. [to Polonius] You played once i’th’ university, you say?

POLONIUS      That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.

HAMLET         What did you enact?

POLONIUS      I did enact Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’ Capitol. Brutus killed me.

HAMLET         It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.     (3.2.88-102)

Claudius is back to regal magnanimity, also, he’s got a plan now (to send Hamlet to England) and so he’s prepared to play nice. How fares our—note the royal plural—cousin Hamlet? (Meaning nephew, but cousin is a broader term in early modern usage; the point is, he’s not calling Hamlet son. And fares meaning, how are you doing? how are things?) Hamlet is more than up to this, and answers with enthusiasm: Excellent i’faith! Tip-top, couldn’t be better! And then swerves into maaaadness: Of the chameleon’s dish—I eat the air, promise-crammed, as if he’s taken fares as meaning eats, what do you eat, and suggesting that, as chameleons were believed to do, he survives on air alone—and promises, promises which, by their nature, are unfulfilled. I’m surviving on nothing, Hamlet suggests, and I’m owed a great deal. You cannot feed capons so. No getting fat on that! (And the castrated capon may refer to his own powerlessness or else be an insult directed at Claudius.) Claudius can interpolate a baffled pause, perhaps trying both to understand and to think of a decent, zinging comeback, but no: I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. No, can’t do it. These words are not mine; I have NO idea what you’re talking about. BOOM: no, nor mine now, my lord. Now that I’ve spoken them, that is, going, going, gone. Too easy, Hamlet might as well say.

So he turns his attention to Polonius, his other regular sparring partner. You played once i’th’ university, you say? (The implication might be that Polonius has been boring on about this, or dropping heavy hints that he’d love to relive his glory days in student drama. Scope for Ophelia to stifle a laugh, or even for Hamlet to share the briefest grin and glance of a familiar joke with her.) And Polonius, like Claudius, seems to want to keep Hamlet onside, to play along with whatever he’s asking: that did I, my lord—I did, absolutely!—and was accounted a good actor. I had some modest success, indeed. Hamlet continues in this vein; does Polonius ever suspect that he’s being mocked? What did you enact? your greatest hit? I did enact—and of course it sounds pompous, rather than play—Julius Caesar. I was killed i’th’ Capitol. Brutus killed me. Yes, that was my star turn, the climactic moment my murder, in the Capitol, by Brutus, you know. (And the actor playing Polonius, probably John Heminges, had probably played Caesar, and the actor playing Hamlet, Richard Burbage, had played Brutus. SPOILER!) But Hamlet deflates Polonius’s pomposity, and also his eager nostalgia (he LOVED being in plays at university!) with a series of bad puns: it was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Pretty brutal of Brutus, obviously, and you must indeed looked a prize idiot, being killed like that. Harsh. Ophelia might laugh despite herself; so might Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, just to dig themselves deeper into their hole. Horatio can look pained (or stoic); Gertrude’s just looking at Hamlet.