The envoys have left the throne room after giving their report to the king, and now Hamlet stands in front of his father and mother - he is thirteen years old, too grown-up by now to sit on his father's knee, even if he would like to.
"And didst thou meet the princesses, my boy? The youngest one is fair indeed, I hear, though her sisters are no less accomplished. England has some mad idea about dividing the kingdom between them when he grows old." This last said almost like a confidence, between a king and his heir.
"Yes, my lord." It is a lie; he did not meet the king of England, nor any of his three daughters, but he wishes to seem a dutiful son, concerned with affairs of state. His father is probably thinking of marrying him to one of them, as England is his faithful tributary, as love between them like the palm might flourish; he would not like knowing that Hamlet spent the mission talking to a noble's bastard son. "They are very gentle ladies."
(He does not remember this conversation many years later, when he sees the princess and her father going to die.)
