POLONIUS      What is between you? Give me up the truth. OPHELIA        He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders Of his affection to me. POLONIUS      Affection? Pooh, you speak like a green girl Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his ‘tenders’, as you call them? OPHELIA        I do not know, my lord, what I should think.          (1.3.97-103) What is […]

POLONIUS      What is’t, Ophelia, he hath said to you? OPHELIA        So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet. POLONIUS      Marry, well bethought: ’Tis told me he hath very oft of late Given private time to you, and you yourself Have of your audience been most free and bounteous. If it be so – as so ’tis put on me, And that in […]

POLONIUS      This above all, to thine own self be true And it must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee. LAERTES        Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord. POLONIUS      The time invites you. Go, your servants tend. LAERTES        Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well What […]

POLONIUS      Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy But not expressed in fancy – rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man And they in France of the best rank and station Are of all most select and generous chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.          (1.3.69-76) […]

POLONIUS      Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar; Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged courage. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in, Bear’t that th’opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure but reserve thy […]

Enter Polonius. LAERTES                    But here my father comes. A double blessing is a double grace: Occasion smiles upon a second leave. POLONIUS      Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail And you are stayed for. There, my blessing with thee, And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character: give thy thoughts no tongue Nor […]

OPHELIA        I shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven Whiles, a puffed and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not his own rede. LAERTES                                O fear me not. I stay too long.           (1.3.44-51) Ophelia’s quite polite, at least initially, although she can be just […]

LAERTES        The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent. Be wary then: best safety lies in fear, Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.         (1.3.35-43) After a small outburst of apparently genuine […]

LAERTES        Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain If with too credent ear you list his songs Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open To his unmastered importunity. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, And keep you in the rear of your affection Out of the shot and danger of desire.          (1.3.28-34) And another thing—and my sense is that, in performance, this is […]

LAERTES        He may not, as unvalued persons do, Carve for himself, for on his choice depends The safety and health of this whole state, And therefore must his choice be circumscribed Unto the voice and yielding of that body Where of he is the head. Then if he says he loves you It fits your wisdom so far to believe it As he in his particular act […]