POLONIUS      Ophelia, walk you here. (Gracious, so please you,

We will bestow ourselves.) Read on this book

That show of such an exercise may colour

Your loneliness. We are oft too blame in this –

’Tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.      (3.1.42-48)

Ophelia, walk you here: it’s notable that Polonius doesn’t wait for her to say anything, he just instructs, perhaps points; his concern is all for Claudius. Gracious, so please you, we will bestow ourselves. You and I, in the meantime, if that’s alright with you, we’re going to go here—and here might be behind the arras hanging at the rear of the stage, or properly off-stage (but imagined to be within sight and hearing of the stage), through a door left ajar, behind a concealed door in a two-way mirror. Whatever, they’re going to be there but not there, watching and listening; Ophelia’s going to be left alone as bait for the man of whom she has sometimes, recently, been afraid. Read on this book—he’s come prepared, shoves it into her hands, open at random, perhaps—that show of such an exercise may colour your loneliness. It’s unseemly for you to be here by yourself, but if you’re reading—and in particular if you’re thought to be reading a prayerbook—well, that’s OK, not too indecorous. A plausible excuse for solitude. It could actually be a prayerbook, clutched desperately as a prop; if Polonius is improvising with any old book, removing a dust-cover perhaps, then it become even more cynical. And if Ophelia has other books with her, to return to Hamlet (cheating by reading ahead a bit), because that’s one of the things they’ve shared and talked about, BOOKS, then Polonius’s ploy is even more clumsy. We are oft too blame in this (he can’t resist moralising, even though Claudius is waiting for him to get undercover)—it’s so often a grievous fault in us—’tis too much proved that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself. I mean, who hasn’t faked piety and prayer in order to advance some kind of shady scheme? Who can honestly say they’re not a hypocrite? If Ophelia has thus far been played as genuinely devout and serious, or potentially so, then she can look at him with utter outrage, or (perhaps worse) bafflement. Are you really making me do this? Are you for real? But she can’t say anything, because of Claudius, and because—still—she’s worried about Hamlet, wants to see him, wants to help.