CLAUDIUS      Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage

For we will fetters put about this fear

Which now goes too free-footed.

ROSENCRANTZ                      We will haste us.

(Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.)      (3.3.24-26)

A tiny fragment, as Claudius ignores Rosencrantz’s long, grovelling protestation of loyalty and service: get on with it then, he says. Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage, go and get ready, prepare yourselves (and there is a suggestion, too, of take weapons, perhaps concealed). You’re leaving soon, and you’ll be travelling swiftly; travel light. And then an extraordinary, uncanny conceit: for we will fetters put about this fear which now goes too free-footed. Claudius the politician, the bureaucrat, the smooth seducer and successful usurper and regicide, is rattled, properly rattled, and he imagines his fear, and the danger he’s in, as an animal, set loose and uncontrolled. He’s mostly speaking to himself; it’s as if he’s lifted the lid on something unawares and it’s out to get him, a threatening presence, closing in. We’ve got to close this down now, go and get on with it. And just shut up with your platitudes. Do your job. Rosencrantz seems to get the message: we will haste us. Sorry, boss. Off at a run.