POLONIUS Mad for thy love?
OPHELIA My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.
POLONIUS What said he?
OPHELIA He took me by the wrist and held me hard,
Then goes he to the length of all his arm
And with his other hand thus o’er his brow
He falls to such perusal of my face
As ’a would draw it. (2.1.82-88)
Was Hamlet mad for thy love? asks Polonius, because—actually quite reasonably—Hamlet’s dishevelment, as much as his distraction, fits the Elizabethan stereotype of the melancholy lover, in some respects at least. And this is what’s on Polonius’s mind, when he thinks of Hamlet and his daughter, that’s the conclusion he immediately jumps to. (He doesn’t have any comment on Ophelia’s evident distress, he’s more concerned with Hamlet.) My lord, I do not know—because of course her father’s already warned her off, and her brother too—so she’s prevaricating a bit, she doesn’t want her father to think that she’s been ‘leading him on’—but truly I do fear it. I don’t want that to be the case! But I’m worried that it is! She’s saying that she’s ‘afraid so’, a turn of phrase that doesn’t now connote actual fear—but here, Ophelia is frightened, she’s been properly scared by Hamlet, and she’s still frightened now.
Well, what said he? Nothing, apparently. (This is, of course, radically out of character for Hamlet.) He took me by the wrist and held me hard—not the hand, not that intimate, but rather a gesture of restraint, even violence. He hurt her. (And Ophelia might demonstrate.) Then goes he to the length of all his arm—he moved back, so that he was holding me there—hard—at arm’s length—and with his other hand thus o’er his brow (she demonstrates) he falls to such perusal of my face as ’a would draw it. He stared at me, intently, as if he was examining me, reading me, committing me to memory. (It’s implicitly not a loving look; Hamlet wasn’t gazing into Ophelia’s eyes, he was staring at her, in a way that seems oddly impersonal, valedictory, deeply unsettling.)