SARAH: After the ghost departs, Hamlet does something that seems quite strange; he exclaims, "My tables, meet it is I set it down." Then, presumably, he takes out pen and a notebook, and speaks out loud as he writes: "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

RALPH: When Hamlet says my tables, he means his notebook. Now, some critics have pointed out that it was customary for a traveling nobleman to keep a kind of travel journal, to record his observations as he moved about.

SARAH: So perhaps this line is suggesting that Hamlet is imagining himself to be a foreign visitor to the court at Elsinore. Such a visitor would naturally ask himself, "What observation should I record about these Danes?"

RALPH: Hamlet's answer, especially after his conversation with the ghost, would be, "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain" — At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.

SARAH: It's helpful for us, too, to imagine that Hamlet is a kind of stranger in Denmark. Although he of course is Danish and belongs in the court of Elsinore, he is not at all at home. He is alienated emotionally from his family, and he is seeing Claudius — and the court — through a stranger's eyes.

RALPH: What Hamlet has written down here — that one may smile and smile and be a villian — is of course referring to Claudius' ability to hide his terrible crime — although he's murdered the King and taken the throne, he is able to completely disguise his guilt and appear happy and morally upright in the Danish court, as we saw him in Act I, scene 2.

SARAH: This kind of disguise — hiding what he really feels — is what Hamlet is not good at, at least not yet.