Mmmm. “Play” with Laertes. Sure. It’s a game. Sure. I mean – it’s a particularly misleading way to talk about a fight. Like – if it were a boxing match and someone came in to ask you if you were ready to PLAY with Mike Tyson. Uh. It’s a fight, right? A match? A sparring?
We use “play” in the context of contests like chess – which are also matches – but when swords are involved, can we rightly call it play? Unless you’re eight and you’re using toy swords, it seems like a stretch.
The Hamlet Project 