Hamlet; the Noir Adaption 2023 Act 2 Scene 2 Sub Scene 5

 Act Two

Act Two Scene Two

Sub Scene Five

The brothers in arms and legs meet once more.

Polonius saw two friends of Hamlet loitering in the corridor. He disliked them although the King have made allowance for them to be near Hamlet.

“My King, those are miscreants.” Polonius has stated his stand with the King. “I am told they are of the bent community if you understand what I mean.”

“My dear Polonius, it’s the will of the young to attempt at anything or there will be an impasse to their development.” The King had said. “I have seen many of my … mistakenly taken, they should be my underlings, they need to …go where others may not proceed…the final frontier shall I add.”

“They may influence Hamlet.” Polonius raised his argument.

“Aye, the youth may be as long as it does not impair his acting. Perhaps, he did it for the roles to come forth.” The King smiled. “I once partake with a harlot to feel the act, and of course, the guilt and pleasure of it. Nothing is beyond the feel of the real that even the mind cannot fathom.”

“Lunacy…” Polonius had muttered. “I am by the acts that God tells me.”

“Open your mind. We are into the quarter century of the current one. Twenty years ago, we were riding horses, and today, we move in steam-powered vehicles and flight with the eagles in the skies…. We do sink like the Titanic when it crashed… but alas, it’s the development of life, and society. You may fly one day and crash another but did you experience it then? Yes, you did. I did and fear not the unknown. It will come to be a passing acceptance one day.”

“Au revoir, my Great Chamberlain. I am to an orgy Roman experience. It’s for my role as Julius. I came, I saw, and I did it.” The King left the Great Chamberlain with distaste to the mouth.

As he did then when he saw the two younger men.

“You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.” The Great Chamberlain walked past the two without acknowledging them properly.

“God save you, sir.” Rosencrantz bowed to the other. The Great Chamberlian may have heard the call, but ignored it. Rosencrantz straightened up and then muttered.

“Pole up yours, Sir.”

“Come hurry up, Rosencrantz. I see Hamlet is there.” Both the young men rushed to meet Hamlet.

“My honored lord.” Rosencrantz greeted the other. “My most dear lord.”

“My excellent good friends! How dost thou,” Hamlet lowered the book. Rosencrantz stepped up and mimic the train.

“Shall we chug the tracks?” Rosencrantz asked. Hamlet smiled and comply with it followed by Guildenstern on the rear. They went chugging along the unseen tracks, hands on the other’s hip, and then Rosencrantz heaved in the imaginary brakes. The other two crashed into his rear with laughter.

“Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?”

“As the indifferent children of the earth.” Rosencrantz laughed.

“Happy in that we are not overhappy. On Fortune’s cap, we are not the very button.” Guildenstern added. They were out of jobs and were free.

“Nor the soles of her shoe?” Hamlet asked.

“Neither, my lord,” Rosencrantz replied.

“Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?” Hamlet mimics the train once more.

“Faith, her privates we were but unfulfilled.” Rosencrantz spread his legs then.

“In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet too.” Hamlet laughed.

“So were we when the needs arise,” Guildenstern added. “What news?”

“Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; out of work since I returned a week or more. But I thank you, and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.” Being penniless was the woe of the actors but Hamlet had sustenance at times from the King, unknown to him was channeled to get the roles he wanted.

“Were you not sent for?” Hamlet quizzed them. “Is it your inclining? Is it a free visitation?”

“Come, come, deal justly with me. Come, come; nay, speak.”

“Does a strumpet tells after? What should we say, my lord?” Guildenstern was upfront.

“Anything but to the purpose. You were sent for, and there is a kind of confession in your looks that your modesties have not crafted enough to color. I know the good king and queen have sent for you.” Hamler was direct then.

“To what end, my lord?” Rosencrantz asked.

“That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonance of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer can charge you withal: be even and direct with me whether you were sent for or no.” Hamlet was insistent to hear from the other.

“What say you?” Rosencrantrz to Guildstern.  

“Nay, then, I have an eye on you.—If you love me, hold not off.” Hamlet insisted to hear it.

“My lord, we were sent for,” Guildenstern admitted. “I do love you, my lord.”

“And I do to both of you. I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen molt no feather. I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
the custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame,” Hamlet paused in his words. “I borrowed from Antonio of the Merchant of Venice; I’m soothed, I know not why I am so sad.”

“The Earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me,” Hamlet had on the expression of disgust. “But a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.”

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals,” Hamlet spread out his arms as in the gesture of appreciation to God, for Man maybe his great creation to adore on.

“And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” Hamlet gestures to his physical frame. “I am perfect in creation.”

Hamlet held a handsome frame, and he is proud of it.

“I have stood nude to all, and not a fracture was my appearance but now, nothing … and not even Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so of us once before’ did they not delight me once?” Hamlet held out his hands to his two friends of his.

“My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. I do delight in you.” Rosencrantz smiled.

“Why did you laugh, then, when I said “man delights not me”?”