The Hamlet Project

I was trying to teach my students about Shakespeare’s implied stage directions about how beseeching someone on my knees would likely indicate some knee-age. It was tricky because they don’t fully understand what it means to imply something. This line is like an implied stage direction. It seems to suggest that something is happening but it’s not entirely clear what it is. Horatio and Marcellus may be attempting to sneak off or scatter or to leave Hamlet alone to muse. Given that he’s just spoken an exit rhyming couplet perhaps they left before and this last line, he calls after them.
All that’s clear is that Horatio and Marcellus have done something to make Hamlet say “Nay” and bring them together.