GUILDENSTERN
Prison, my lord?
HAMLET
Denmark’s a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.
HAMLET
A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.
ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one. ‘Tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
GUILDENSTERN
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET
245A dream itself is but a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
HAMLET
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretched heroes the
