To which his confidant rejoins:
The danger is the greater.
And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes:
I only heard the prince wish
. . . . . . .
He had fewer by a thousand men.
Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the
like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt?
or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark of the same
military confidant, "I smell a rat, sir," there was merely a fortuitous
coincidence with Hamlet's reflection as he "whips out his rapier"--in
itself a martial proceeding--under similar circumstances to the same
effect?