POLONIUS      The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and the liberty. These are the only men.

HAMLET         O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou?

POLONIUS      What a treasure had he, my lord?

HAMLET         Why,

One fair daughter and no more,

The which he loved passing well.

POLONIUS

[aside]

Still on my daughter.

HAMLET         Am I not i’th’ right, old Jephthah?

POLONIUS      If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.

HAMLET         Nay, that follows not.

POLONIUS      What follows then, my lord?

HAMLET         Why,
         As by lot,
God wot,
and then, you know,
It came to pass,
As most like it was.
The first row of the pious chanson will show you more, for look where my abridgement comes. (2.2.333-358)

A bitty exchange between Hamlet and Polonius, shorter than it appears on the page and often trimmed in performance, as Hamlet (apparently) sings fragments of a ballad and repeats bit of doggerel to bait the old man, and Polonius tries both to keep up and to regain the upper hand. He begins sometimes as if by reading a playbill, a selection of quotes from reviews (to be anachronistic); it’s perhaps as if he is completely stage-struck, can’t believe that these actors are here! These are, apparently, the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. These actors can play anything, they’re the masters of all forms and genres! (Polonius can sometimes be baffled or awed by all these possibilities.) Then something which sounds even more slogan-like: Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light for the law of writ and the liberty. They can perform the most serious Latin tragedies, the most hilarious Roman comedies; nothing’s beyond them! (It’s obscure.) These are the only men! They’re unsurpassed!

Hamlet is ostentatiously unmoved, in his apparently tangential interjection, perhaps sung: O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou? Polonius can’t resist biting, as Hamlet well knows: what a treasure had he, my lord? Why, one fair daughter and no more, the which he loved passing well. Still on my daughter, muses Polonius, which was of course the point. Am I not i’th’ right, old Jephthah? (Which is insulting, given that Jephthah kills his daughter.) Polonius swallows irritation, but continues to take the bait: If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well. Is that the connection you’re making? (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern might prick up their ears here, is there a girl involved? but mostly, they’re aware that they’re in over their heads, that this isn’t the straightforward assignment they were expecting. Not the brightest, these boys.) Nay, that follows not. That’s not the next line; also, that doesn’t make sense. So Hamlet quotes or sings the next few lines of the ballad. But that’s enough, he says, the first row of the pious chanson will show you more, you’ll have to look at the first verse of the song for the rest, for look where my abridgement comes. The players are here, cutting me short!