Enter [Player] King and [Player] Queen.

PLAYER KING Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round

Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground

And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen

About the world have times twelve thirties been

Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands

Unite commutual in most sacred bands.       (3.2.148-153)

And now the play proper; sometimes the Player King and Player Queen bear more than a superficial resemblance to Gertrude and Old Hamlet… What is established first is how long they have been married, and it’s established elaborately and at length, because what it’s also is establishing is an idiom, even more archaic and fulsome than that of the Pyrrhus speech, all in rhyming couplets: full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart gone round Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed ground—in this geocentric, pre-Copernican universe, in which the sun orbits the earth, the chariot of the sun, Phoebus’ cart, has circled the earth, its seas, Neptune’s salt wash, and the globe, the earth itself, Tellus’ orbed ground. That orbit has been completed thirty times—so, thirty years. And, just to make it absolutely clear: thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen about the world have times twelve thirties been, yes, thirty years, that’s thirty times twelve months, twelve moons, borrowing their light from the sun; they’ve orbited the earth as well. THIRTY YEARS. It’s been THIRTY YEARS since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands unite commutual in most sacred bands. We’ve loved each other for thirty years; we’ve been married for thirty years. United, indissolubly, for THIRTY YEARS.

(Hamlet may be about thirty. This has historically been the cause of much ‘controversy’.)