ROSENCRANTZ          My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the King.

HAMLET         The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing.

GUILDENSTERN        A thing, my lord?

HAMLET         Of nothing. Bring me to him.             (Exeunt.)         (4.2.23-28)

Rosencrantz tries again, calm, calm, but increasingly desperate; Claudius’s patience is running out, Hamlet’s wildly unpredictable, and they’re trying to track down a dead body in the middle of the night. My lord, you must tell us where the body is—please!—and go with us to the King. That’s all. Please! Hamlet has another go, hitting on a formulation which sounds suggestive, meaningful, and even intelligible, but isn’t, really: the body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. What matters more than the sense, which is pretty opaque, is the sound, and the illusion of sense, the rhetorical neatness. Then a sharper twist, a bit daring—go on, laugh—the King is a thing, an object, or something more obscene, even. Guildenstern makes his first intervention in the scene, baffled, or perhaps shocked by this lack of respect: a thing, my lord? What do you mean? Of nothing. He’s NOTHING. Dust, ashes, a complete nonentity. But Hamlet’s made his mind up; apparently he’s going to go quietly, for now. Bring me to him. Go on then, just this once, you toadying, pathetic little creeps. I know how terrified you are; you had no idea what you were getting into when you were sent for.

And that’s the end of the–short!–scene.