Please Help With Hamlet

[Doc2324]

Hi everyone! I have an assignment where i need to talk about what this passage is in Hamlet and I'm sort of scared over it. I need to talk about the what's going on in the scene, and explain why it is significant. If you guys can help me out in anyway I would really be grateful.


I did love you once.

OPHELIA
116 Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET
117 You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
118 so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
119 it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA
120 I was the more deceived.

HAMLET
121 Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder
122 of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I
123 could accuse me of such things that it were better my
124 mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful,
125 ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
126 thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape,
127 or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do
128 crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
129 all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
130 Where's your father?

OPHELIA
131 At home, my lord.

HAMLET
132 Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
133 fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA
134 O, help him, you sweet heavens!

[Jim58]

What happens in this part of the scene? Hamlet is wrapping up his 2B speech within ear shot of Ophelia, Claudius and Polonius. It may well be that Hamlet is aware that he is under observation which may explain the cryptic nature of the soliloquy, but that's another subject. Ophelia is presented as the vision of piety, engrossed in her prayer vigil. Hamlet's first words to her are a request for her to remember his sins in her prayers. He has recognized her "pious action": her prayers.

Their opening lines to each other are distant and formal which is a bit of a suprise given what we have heard about this budding romance. As she formally greets him, "How does your honor for this many a day?"; he responds as if to a stranger, "I humbly thank you, well." This the same formal response with which he receives Osric in 5.2 (I humbly thank you sir.) and the Captain in 4.4 (I humbly thank you, sir). Hamlet is being (or acting) very distant because he has become disillusioned by women. Casual observers of Hamlet accord too much credit for Hamlet's antics to the death of his father and the search for his revenge and not enough on his mother's fall from grace and his subsequent disillusionment with women.

We have been forwarned how Hamlet will receive Ophelia from her encounter with him in her closet (2.1). He does not see her the same way he used to. It is incorrect to conclude that he is merely acknowledging her (and her father's) rejection of him. Hamlet is the one who has changed it is not that he is rejecting Ophelia specifically it is that he is rejecting women in general. She accuses him of forgetting her, for abandoning her and what they had. The simpler analysis says Hamlet is the one who has been abandoned. That he is the one who is justifiably indignant, but this gives credence to Polonius' theory that Hamlet's antics are a result of neglected love. We know Polonius' assessment is wrong. Hamlet's reactions are not justified and are not rational.

To stir his memory, Ophelia returns some gifts (remembrances). He denies giving her anything. She even offers the circumstances of there delivery by him with words of so sweet breath composed. We have to believe her on this because of her description of Hamlet's attention as told to her father back in 1.3. At this point she uses an interesting term, 'to the noble mind." The noble mind is a rational mind, a reasoned mind, a mind that Hamlet aspires to. It echoes Hamlet's opening question in his 2B soliloquy. In other words if Hamlet was in his right mind he would understand. As Laertes suggested before he left for France, the perfume is lost. So she gives back the gifts.

Hamlet then takes control of the discussion to unburden himself. He isn't burdened with remembraces and noble minds (much as the Ghost would like him to be). He is confounded by the baser side of life and though he has more understanding of men acting like animals, he is hung up on the agility with which women can be so. Hamlet puts his "frailty thy name is woman" test straight to Ophelia. Is she honest and fair? Gertrude is not honest. With that Hamlet launches into his attack on womanhood.

This is without a doubt one of the more difficult concepts Hamlet delivers in the whole play. In this passage honesty=chastity and fair=beauty:

HAMLET
That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA
Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than
with honesty?

HAMLET
Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the
force of honesty can translate beauty into his
likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the
time gives it proof. I did love you once.

Hamlet is telling Ophelia that if you are both chaste and beautiful, your chastity should not permit anyone to converse with your beauty. Chastity keeps away the lure of beauty that would draw it into bawdy acts, i.e., sex. Ophelia's reaction proves Hamlet's point, beauty has no interest in guarding chastity though by its very nature chastity has to guard beauty. Beauty has such power that it would sooner turn chastity into bawdiness, rather than chastity forcing beauty to be chaste. In other words for Hamlet, beauty is stronger than chastity though he used to believe otherwise (sometime a paradox), his mother's behavior proves it (the time gives it proof).

So too for Hamlet's expression of love. Attraction to her beauty generated feelings of lust not love. Men are arrant knaves who don't love. His words of so sweet breath composed were not based in love but lust. She should not have believed him. Virtue cannot innoculate against our nature. Men are sinners. Why would she want to breed the likes of him. She should just get herself to a nunnery before she destroys herself and him along with her. This scene parallels and foreshadows his confrontation with his mother in 3.4 where the tone is the same.

The use of the term "nunnery" ties back to Ophelia's pious action in devotional prayer. A nunnery is a place that encourages prayer and where chastity is not endangered by beauty. And as Hamlet continues in his rant, it protects her from the evils of marriage and the weaknesses women are inclined to, such as face painting, jigging and ambling, etc.