Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

HAMLET         So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other:

You do remember all the circumstance?

HORATIO        Remember it, my lord?

HAMLET         Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly –

And praised be rashness for it – let us know

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do fall – and that should learn us

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

HORATIO                    That is most certain. (5.2.1-11)

Are they talking about Ophelia? About Laertes? Perhaps they have been, but, mid conversation, Hamlet is filling Horatio in on how he got back to Denmark, and why. So much for this, sir—whatever this is. Maybe Ophelia? but lamentably dismissive, if so. Now shall you see the other—back to what I was talking about before—you do remember all the circumstance? You recall what was going on, the situation I was in? Remember it, my lord? Of course. Cliffhanger stuff.

So, there I was, on the ship to England… sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep. I was uneasy, agitated, wide awake; methought I lay worse than the mutines in the bilboes. I was in a worse state than a mutineer clapped in irons, more out of sorts, and filled with more foreboding. I felt trapped. So, rashly—and praised be rashness for it, thank goodness I acted on my impulses—for let us know our indiscretion sometime serves us well when our deep plots do fall—sometimes we have to just follow our instincts, act in the moment without knowing quite what we’re doing, because even the best-thought-through plans can fall apart—and (parenthesis after parenthesis, Hamlet is using this as a way of talking himself into other kinds of acceptance, other ways of acting; he’s trying to find meaning and purpose in his situation, in the present as much as in the past)—and that should learn is there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Sometimes you just have to surrender and trust, you know? set things in motion, or even not, and trust that some higher power will enable us to see it through, even if we don’t know where we’re going and what we’re doing at the outset. Sometimes you just have to stop thinking, and DO—but I was MEANT to be unable to sleep. That is most certain, says Horatio, the philosopher.