Act 4, Scene 4
Fortinbras: Go, Captain, greet the Danish king from me, and tell him that I ask his permission to, as
it was promised, go through his lands. You know were to find me when you will be back. If the king
wanted something else from us, we will go to meet him in presence, and let him know so.
Captain: I will do it, my lord.
Fortinbras: Go ahead.
Hamlet: Sir, whose are those troops?
Captain: They are king of Norway’s troops, sir.
Hamlet: Why are they here?
Captain: They are going to invade some part of Poland
Hamlet: Who commands them, sir,
Captain: The nephew of the old king of Norway, Fortinbras.
Hamlet: Is he going to the center of Poland or somewhere on the border?
Captain: Honestly, and just telling the truth, we are going to conquer a little patch of ground,
which the only good thing that has is its name. I would not pay to farm it even if the cost was five
ducats. And it will not even give more profit to Norway or to Poland.
Hamlet: So the Pole will not defend it because of this.
Captain: They will defend it, and there are already troops there.
Hamlet: Even two thousand people going to die and twenty thousand ducats wasted will solve this
insignificant problem. This is the consequence of too much wealth and peace. This breaks the
country from the inside and does not show anything from outside and meanwhile the man die.
Thank you very much, sir.
Captain: I hope that God will be with you, sir.
Hamlet: […]
In this scene I will play the role of the Captain, his function in the scene is to receive information
from the king of Norway and then tell them to Hamlet, so he is like an intermediary between the
two characters.
The scene is important for Hamlet’s soliloquy, in this soliloquy Hamlet says that humans have the
capacity of reasoning and of thinking, and that these are the things that make humans different
from beasts “If his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.”
(William Shakespeare). He also shows himself upset because of the fact that twenty thousand
people are going to fight and die for such a stupid reason “ While, to my shame, I see the imminent
death of twenty thousand men, that for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their graves like beds, fight for a
plot whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, which is not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain”