HAMLET         Ha! Ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA        My lord?

HAMLET         Are you fair?

OPHELIA        What means your lordship?

HAMLET         That if you be honest and fair you should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA        Could Beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with Honesty?

HAMLET         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.    (3.1.102-114)

Hamlet’s really not coping (and the choice can be made, of course, to suggest that he knows they’re being watched, that he’s putting on a show). But he’s unbelievably cruel; he laughs at Ophelia, laughs quite literally in her face as she tries to return his gifts. And then: are you honest? He means, are you chaste and virtuous, are you a Good woman or a Bad one? She’s baffled, perhaps even outraged at the suggestion: my lord? what are you going on about? (If it’s being suggested that they’ve had an intimate relationship, then he’s also accusing her of cheating on him, as well as of promiscuity more generally.) He’s relentless: are you fair? are you beautiful? There could even be the suggestion of, think you’re alright do you? think you’re pretty? What means your lordship? I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I can’t follow this. A dart of the eyes to where her father’s concealed, yet? Well—he pushes on, sarcastically, perhaps explaining as if to an idiot: that if you be honest and fair (beauty and virtue were thought to go together) you should admit no discourse to your beauty. If you’re such a good girl you shouldn’t be talking to me, should you? you shouldn’t be talking to anyone! Ophelia gamely tries to engage—perhaps they’ve done this sort of thing before, this needling banter—could Beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with Honesty? The capitals are editorial, emphasising that Ophelia’s trying to shift into a more general moralising: well, beauty and honesty, beauty and virtue, they go together, don’t they? Ay, truly. Hamlet seems to agree, but then attacks again, savagely: 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. Good luck with that, yeah, right, he’s saying, seizing on Ophelia’s commerce—meaning a relationship, an interaction—to suggest sex work. Beauty corrupts virtue, pimps it out, far more readily than virtue can keep beauty on the straight and narrow. He’s skirting around calling Ophelia a whore, working himself up to saying that all women are whores, cheats, hypocrites. A moment of self-awareness, or at least further sarcasm—this was sometime a paradox, an impossibility or perhaps something to debate in the abstract, but now the time gives it proof. It was true all along, I know, I can tell, I can see.