HAMLET So I do still, by these pickers and stealers317.
ROSENCRANTZ Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper?
You do freely bar the door of your own liberty, if you deny319
your griefs to your friend.
HAMLET Sir, I lack advancement.
ROSENCRANTZ How can that be, when you have the voice of the
king himself for your succession in Denmark?
HAMLET Ay, but 'While the grass grows'324 -- the proverb is
something musty.
Enter one with a recorder
O, the recorder! Let me see.
Takes the recorder
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
To withdraw327 with you: why do you go
about to recover the wind of me, as if328
you would drive me into a toil?
GUILDENSTERN O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too330
unmannerly.
HAMLET I do not well understand that. Will you play upon
this pipe?
GUILDENSTERN My lord, I cannot.
HAMLET I pray you.
GUILDENSTERN Believe me, I cannot.
HAMLET I do beseech you.
GUILDENSTERN I know no touch of it, my lord.
HAMLET 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages339 with
your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth and it
will discourse most excellent music. Look you, these are the
stops.
GUILDENSTERN But these cannot I command to any utterance of