HORATIO        So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t.

HAMLET         They are not near my conscience. Their defeat

Does by their own insinuation grow.

’Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes

Between the pass and fell incensed points

Of mighty opposites.

HORATIO                    Why, what a king is this!       (5.2.56-61)

Horatio’s oddly euphemistic, even evasive, at least to modern ears: so Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to’t. That is, you sent them to their deaths, then? Only it’s not a question, just a confirmation, a statement of fact. Got that. They are not near my conscience, replies Hamlet, with more than a little defiant brutality. I don’t care; it doesn’t bother me one bit. They had it coming; they were asking for it! Their defeat does by their own insinuation grow, the way they wormed their way in, pretended to be my friends. No more than they deserved. (Which is harsh.) Perhaps realising just how cold he sounds, Hamlet retreats into some more abstract, lofty moralising to justify himself: ’tis dangerous when the baser nature comes between the pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites. That’s what you get for playing with the big boys: little people get trampled and crushed. (His metaphor is of people being caught in the middle of a duel, in the crossfire as it were; he and Claudius are the combatants, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern reduced to collateral damage. If you can’t stand the heat…) Horatio’s perhaps retreating from tricky questions regarding the justification of Hamlet’s sending his former friends to their deaths (he’s now responsible for the deaths of at least three people) to safer ground, the villainy of Claudius: why, what a king is this! That, at least, he and Hamlet can agree on.