HAMLET         For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion – have you a daughter?

POLONIUS      I have, my lord.

HAMLET         Let her not walk i’th’ sun: conception is a blessing but as your daughter may conceive, friend – look to’t.

POLONIUS      [aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first, ’a said I was a fishmonger! ’A is far gone; and truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I’ll speak to him again. – What do you read, my lord?

HAMLET         Words, words, words.           (2.2.178-189)

Some of Hamlet’s madness is being performed via non sequiturs and fragments, allowing him to say things which are ironically or tangentially relevant to his situation. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion (it was believed that maggots were generated in rotting flesh by the action of the sun)—and the image is both disgusting and sensual, with kissing carrion in particular carrying a sexual charge—but then he changes direction. Have you a daughter? Polonius has been waiting for this, might smile briefly, but he’s playing it cool: I have, my lord. Hamlet presses home, he’s winning this one so far: let her not walk i’th’ sun (implicitly making Ophelia’s body the rotting kissing carrion, both repulsive and attractive): conception is a blessing (extrapolating from the maggots being generated in the decaying flesh) but as your daughter may conceive, friend—look to’t. You wouldn’t want your daughter getting pregnant now, would you? (Within the play’s family scheme, Hamlet is of course THE son and so the sun, suggestively.) Watch out, old man! She’s not safe with me! (Which is, of course, what Polonius suspects.)

How say you to that? Well I never, I told you so; Polonius can even be amazed that he is apparently so right about the situation. Still harping on my daughter, Hamlet is, clearly, completely obsessed with her. Yet—and this troubles the self-centred Polonius—he knew me not at first, ’a said I was a fishmonger! He didn’t recognise me at all back there, thought I was a fishmonger, for heaven’s sake, do I LOOK like a fishmonger? ’A is far gone, he’s really in a bad way, is Hamlet. And truly, in my youth I suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I was a lover once too, of course, sorrowing and sighing, all over the place, didn’t know which way was up. (A moment of nostalgic reverie?)

I’ll speak to him again, have another go, see what I can get out of him. What do you read, my lord? He means, what’s the book? Bit of gentle book-chat, bit of bonding, exchange of confidences? Oh, words, words, words, replies Hamlet; he’s been waiting for this one, and it’s almost too easy.