Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty
should admit no discourse to your beauty.[b 1]
Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce[b 2]
than with[a 1] honesty? 110
Ham. 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 115
you once.[b 3]
Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
Ham. You should not have believed me; for virtue
cannot so inoculate[a 2][b 4] our old stock but we shall
relish of it; I loved you not.[b 5] 120
Oph. I was the more deceived.
Ham. Get thee to[a 3] a nunnery; why wouldst thou be
a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent[b 6]
- ↑ 107, 108.] Hamlet had ironically baffled Polonius by commending his wisdom in restraining and secluding Ophelia; the same irony will serve again. Your father and brother were right; your virtue should permit no one to hold converse with your beauty, Ophelia replies as if Hamlet had said that beauty and honesty should not hold converse with each other, and he accepts her reading of his words.
- ↑ 109. commerce] intercourse, as in Twelfth Night, III. iv. 191.
- ↑ 111-116.] I loved you once—in the days when it was a paradox—an absurdity—to say that beauty could sooner transform virtue into a procuress for lust than virtue could translate beauty to its own likeness. But now, the world, the present time, proves the paradox true; Hamlet thinks of his mother; of his own honesty represented as a wanton passion for beauty; of Ophelia's virtue, which cannot be trusted by Polonius to act as guardian of her beauty, but will rather corrupt his and her honesty.
- ↑ 119. inoculate] used in the botanical sense, to graft by the insertion of a bud; virtue cannot so graft love in our old evil stock but that we shall have a flavour of this evil stock. So Bishop Hall: "That Palatine vine, late inoculated with a precious bud of our royal stem."
- ↑ 120. I loved you not] it was not true love, for the taint of evil was in it; so your father has told you, apd you have acted in accordance with his orders.
- ↑ 123. indifferent] fairly, as in V. ii.97.
