"Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders
Of his affection to me.
Pol. Affection? puh! you speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?
Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
Pol. Marry, I'll teach you : think yourself a baby:
That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly;
Or, (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,
Wronging it thus,) you'll tender me a fool.
Oph. My lord, he hath importun'd me with love,
In honourable fashion.
Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to.
Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks."
A green girl, indeed; a baby in the perils of court amours, having the credulity of innocence, but not that of stupidity. A sensitive unsophisticated maiden for the first time in love, wondering at the new and strange sensation, scarcely confessing it to herself, unable to distinguish the traits of the mysterious tyrant who has set up his throne in her young heart. The father and the brother fear for her chastity; and these fears may have been well founded, for she appears the very prototype of Margaret in Faust, who, in the very spirit of unselfish devotion, could refuse her lover nothing. But they need not have feared for her modesty, or for that precious quality in women which the cold word modesty, or moral moderation, does not express: the shamefacedness of love (pudicitia, pudewr, Keuscheit) at once the effect and the proof of moral purity. Had Ophelia been capable of measuring her love in accordance with the advice of her worldly brother, of yielding to Hamlet so far as the probability of the voice of the nation assenting to his marriage might justify her, her chastity might have been perfectly safe; but it is certain that the pudicitia of her love would have
