Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = players

So I'm re-reading Hamlet. Shakespeare's language is scraping a crust off my brain.

I've been trying to pay attention to a number of things, including what phrases in Hamlet survive today (so many). I came across one I hadn't expected—the use of the word "play" in the same slang sense we use it today. As in, I got played. I have no idea about the etymology of this particular use of "play." But there it was, in Hamlet.

A little set-up: everyone has finished watching The Mousetrap, the play Hamlet has on-the-sly arranged to reenact his father's murder (the idea being to watch King Claudius watching The Mousetrap, in order to figure out if he is in fact guilty). Sure enough, Claudius gets really upset, says stop the play (Give me some light: away!) and storms off.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern approach Hamlet, telling him his mother wants to "to speak with you in her closet" (uh-oh). Hamlet believes, rightly, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are working for Claudius, keeping an eye on Hamlet/getting in his shit. Hamlet asks Guildenstern, "will you play upon/this pipe?" referring to a recorder. Guildenstern is puzzled, and repeatedly tells him, no, I can't, I don't know how. But Hamlet is insistent. (III.ii.337-353)

HAMLET
I do beseech you.

GUILDENSTERN
I know no touch of it, my lord.

HAMLET
'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with
your fingers and thumb, give it breath with your
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are the stops.

GUILDENSTERN
But these cannot I command to any
utterance of harmony; I have not the skill.

HAMLET
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my
mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass: and there is much music,
excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot
you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am
easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what
instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
cannot play upon me.

As in, you're trying to play me asshole but you can't.

The pic above: "Rosenberg and Goldstein," neighbors of Harold & Kumar in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Hamlet references in stoner flicks = love.