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My lord, I have remembrances of yours

Ophelia
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longèd long to redeliver.
I pray you now receive them.
Hamlet
No, not I. I never gave you aught.
Ophelia
My honored lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,
Take these again, for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.

What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

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, your honesty
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. I did love you once.
Ophelia
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet
You should not have believed me, for virtue
cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall
relish of it. I loved you not.
Ophelia
I was the more deceived.
Hamlet
Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be
a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest,
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am
very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses
at my beck than I have thoughts to put them
in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act
them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

Source:
Act 3
Scene 1
Line 102

Source Type:

Spoken by:
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Themes:
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