Page 300 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

3.1 N O T E S 193

103. Ha, ha!areyou honest? The change of manner
is due to Ham.'s recollection of the plot laid at 2. 2.
160—67. Oph. has overplayed her part: it was not he
who had jilted her but she him, at her father's command;
her little speech, 'sententious' and 'couched in rhyme,
has an air of having been prepared' (Dowden); finally,
though he meets her 'by accident' (1. 30), she is ready
with her trinkets. Ham. is now on his guard; he knows
that both the K. and Pol. are listening; and what he
says for the rest of the scene is designed for their ears;
though, 'lapsed in passion,' he oversteps the mark to-
wards the end. He begins in the 'fishmonger' vein,
cf. 2. 2. 174-86.
107-108. your honesty.. .beauty i.e. your modesty
ought to have guarded your beauty better than to allow
it to be used as a decoy in this fashion (harking back to
'loose my daughter' 2. 2. 162). Oph. naturally mis-
understands and supposes him to mean that her beauty
and his honesty ought not to discourse together.
111-15. Ay truly.. .gives it proof Accepting her
words, he twists them back to his own meaning by
declaring that Beauty can transform Virtue itself into an
opportunity for the gratification of lust. He is thinking
not only of Oph.'s behaviour but his mother's, as is clear
from the talk of 'our old stock' that follows.
115. once i.e. before my mother married again.
117-19. You should not... I loved you not i.e. a son
of Gertrude is 'rank and gross in nature' and so in-
capable of anything but lust. Cf. 'this too too sullied
flesh' 1. 2. 129, and G. 'inoculate,' 'relish.'
121.* Get thee to a nunnery. 'Nunnery'was a cant
word for a house of ill fame and that Ham. has this
meaning in mind is, I think, clear from his final speech.
Cf. Fletcher, Mad Lover, 4. 2. 'There's an old Nun-
nerie at hand. What's that? A bawdy-house' and
v. N.E.D. for other instances.
122. a breeder of sinners Carrying on the thought