HAMLET Why, look you now how unworthy a thing you make of me: you would play upon me! You would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to my compass. And there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ. Yet cannot you make it speak. ’Sblood! Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you fret me you cannot play upon me.
Enter POLONIUS.
God bless you, sir. (3.2.355-364)
Hamlet is now bitterly, icily angry and sarcastic: why, look you now how unworthy a thing you make of me. This is just insulting, the way you’re treating me: you say you can’t even play a recorder, the simplest of instruments, yet you would play upon me! You would seem to know my stops, all my notes, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery, discover my craft and get to know all my secrets (a mystery is a skill to be learned as well as something mysterious); you would sound me from my lowest note to my compass. You are trying to find out everything about me, expose me utterly, from top to bottom, bottom to top, and everything in between. (Sound me is probe, get the measure of, as well as play, as the depth of the sea might be measured.) And there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ. A recorder is a fine thing, well played, pleasant to hear and to make music on. Yet cannot you make it speak: you can’t even play the recorder? ’Sblood! By God’s Blood, literally, but it’s more like, well, screw that, f**k me; f**k you, FRIEND. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Do you really think I’m that stupid, that easily taken-in and manipulated? Call me what instrument you will—call me anything you like—though you fret me, worry away at me (with a pun on the frets of a lute) you cannot play upon me. I won’t let you. I won’t have it. We’re done.
Enter Polonius, maybe forestalling actual violence. God bless you, sir: it could be mocking, it could just be relief (for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as much as for Hamlet): here’s someone else to bear the brunt of Hamlet’s anger and sarcasm. He knows Polonius is out to get him on Claudius’s behalf; he’d thought better, once, of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.