There is symmetry here, too. The them, them, him. And it is actually a little tricky to say.
It is curious how much music is in these few lines of the messenger – this line, like the ending of a song.
And in looking at the text on Genius, it is oddly printed. (Where does Genius get its texts? Which text are the editors editing? What is the baseline?)
The way it’s broken down on Genius, the messenger has a 10 syllable line, then a 13 syllable line and then a 5 syllable.
There is no reason for this that I can see, especially when it could just be a silly breakdown as 10, 9, 9.
But one can only annotate lines on genius, one can’t, say, re-organize the scansion.

“So this guy Shakespeare, he says to me, he says, ‘I’m gonna put you in my masterwork. This play, Hamlet, is going to be the best I’ve ever written and you, Claudio, you will make a little appearance.’
I don’t mind telling you, I got a little excited. Is he going to make me a king? A priest? A noble pirate? I stayed up, staring at my ceiling, imagining what sort of character I might be. I was all pumped up when the show final opened and I got to find out what character he meant me to be.
At first I thought maybe he’d made me the murderous king, but his name is Claudius. Which is close but not quite. I would have been happy with that, though, even if he is the bad guy.
But then the messenger says this and it turns out I’m just a guy who gets handed a message and passes that message to a messenger. All offstage. I mean….a year or two ago, he named the young lover after me. I thought it would at least be as good as that.
We’re going to have to have a little chat. I’m going to push for a juicier part in the next one – like a guy who goes to prison or has his life threatened or something. I’m not saying I’m going to do that to Mr. Shakespeare – but he’s got a lot of nerve. I’m not even a real character in Hamlet. Just a name.”

I like an I statement from a messenger. Often times a messenger seems to have no sense of selfhood. They deliver the news and the news takes center stage. But when an I turns up, then there must be a full person behind it. In this case, an I that definitely did not see the sailors, no sir, that has no connection to this (potentially) dangerous message whatsoever.

When people talk about the Bard’s poetic sense, they’re usually talking about the meter, the rhyme schemes or the images. I see it here as well. Roll this line around in your mouth and you’ll see that it just feels good. There is rhythm and a satisfying symmetry to “Sailors, my lord, they say.”
And yes part of that satisfaction is how it fits (and doesn’t fit) into the Iambic Pentameter but part of it is the balance of Ss and Ls. The assonance, the alliteration in a 6 syllable sentence. A word like lord sits comfortably near a sentence with sailors and saying. So pleasurable. Sssssso pllllllllleasurable. Letters. Words. Even in the mouth of a lowly messenger.