Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the players, the rogue and peasant slave

The room of state. Claudius and Gertrude have summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet's school friends, to discover the cause of his behavior. The pair accept the commission with smooth deference. Polonius enters with his theory of love-madness and Hamlet's letters to Ophelia, reading the most embarrassing of them aloud — "doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love." They plan to "loose" Ophelia in a corridor where Hamlet will see her, and watch from behind an arras. Hamlet enters reading. They withdraw to test him.

Hamlet immediately runs verbal circles around Polonius — "do you know me, my lord?" "Excellent well; you are a fishmonger" — leaving the old man more convinced than ever that he is mad. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try next; Hamlet sees through them at once and asks plainly, "were you not sent for?" They cannot deny it. He gives them, instead of the answer they have come for, his great speech on the world and on humanity: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty... and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

Then the traveling players arrive. Hamlet greets them warmly and asks the first player for a speech — the speech of Aeneas to Dido, the death of Priam, Hecuba's grief. The player begins; within twenty lines he is weeping real tears, his face pale, his voice broken, for an imagined queen he has no connection to. Hamlet sends them off with their luggage, asks if they know "The Murder of Gonzago," instructs the lead player to insert a dozen lines he will write tonight. Then, alone, the second soliloquy: "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" The actor wept for Hecuba; he, Hamlet, has had real cause and has done nothing. He resolves to use the players. Tomorrow's performance will mirror the murder of his father, "to catch the conscience of the king."