OPHELIA
As she watched her brother's preparations, she wished she were the one leaving -- or at least that she were going with him. Laertes had been back since the old king's death, which had been when everything changed. The queen, who had been her closest friend in the court, had first been lost in mourning and then swept up in the new king's wooing. She now seemed oddly distant in manner, except to King Claudius, on whom she clung. And then Ophelia's father suddenly became drawn to the center of power in the new king's court. He had been but one of old King Hamlet's advisers, and certainly not the chiefest. But when the decision was made by them to name King Hamlet's brother -- and not his son -- his successor, the faction opposing the decision dwindled. Some had gone into exile. Others ... she had no idea what happened to them. Her father, who had supported Claudius, was now his closest adviser. Court affairs confused and frightened her.
As for the prince, young Hamlet, he had returned, distraught, from Wittenberg a few days after his father's death. For once, he brought her no gifts: Before, he had always brought her some trinket -- a cunningly carved wooden animal, a book of verse, once a fine gold necklace, which she had worn until her father noticed it recently and asked where it came from. Angrily, he told her to put it away -- out of sight.
This was the greatest change of all. Before King Hamlet's death, her father had always encouraged her friendship with the prince, hinting that the young man might be in love with her. Queen Gertrude had also stirred her interest in young Hamlet, saying that they would make a handsome couple. For her part, Ophelia enjoyed the fantasy, but was less fond of the reality: To marry the prince would put her at the center of the court and its affairs, precisely where she never wanted to be. He was handsome and kind, but he was also almost twice her age. She thought of him as more like a brother than a lover. And now she understood that his uncle, the king, would probably force Hamlet to marry into the royal house of some other country as a diplomatic move. She must not allow herself to be an obstacle to that, her father told her, sternly.
"My necessaries are embarked," said Laertes, who was dressed in his traveling clothes. He kissed her and said, "Farewell," then embraced her and added, "and sister, as the winds give benefit and convey is assistant, do not sleep but let me hear from you."
"Do not doubt that," she said reassuringly.
But then her brother frowned and said, "For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute, no more."
These weren't her brother's words, she thought. They sounded almost like a speech someone had given him to recite. He sounded like ... her father. She nodded and said, in a small voice, a bit frightened, "No more but so."
Laertes continued, "Think it no more. For nature crescent does not grow alone in thews and bulks, but as this temple waxes," he grasped her shoulders and looked her in the eye, "the inward service of the mind and soul grows with withal."
She understood only a part of what he was saying, but he continued, "Perhaps he loves you now, and now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch the virtue of his will; but you must fear, his greatness weighed, his will is not his own." Yes, she understood, he must marry a princess, not her, but Laertes seemed determined to make the point clear: "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 whereof he is the head."
She nodded her head, hoping that this lecture was at an end. But he wasn't finished. "Then if he says he loves you it fits your wisdom so far to believe it as he in his particular act and place may give his saying deed, which is no further than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 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."
She blushed deeply. Never, never had her brother talked to her in these terms. She knew now that her father had insisted on his delivering this speech. Perhaps he was even listening now, outside the door. "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. The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes."
Her blush of embarrassment was now tinged with a growing anger at being lectured to at such length. But she didn't want to spoil her parting from a brother she might never see again, and she held her tongue as he continued: "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."
Ophelia finally found a chance to speak, and with some spirit in her voice she assured Laertes, "I shall the effect of this good lesson" -- she nodded in emphasis of these words -- "keep as watchman to my heart." Then she added, with a sly smile, "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 reddened and muttered, "O fear me not." He turned to go. "I stay too long."
Ophelia smiled at his embarrassment, and then noticed that Polonius had appeared in the doorway. Yes, she thought, he was listening outside.
"But here my father comes," Laertes said, a little abashed. "A double blessing is a double grace: Occasion smiles upon a second leave."
"Yet here, Laertes?" boomed Polonius. "Aboard, aboard for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail and you are stayed for." But despite this scolding, it was clear that Polonius was not ready to let go of his son. He put his arm around Laertes and held him back: "There, my blessing with thee, and these few precepts look thou character: Give thy thoughts no tongue nor any unproportioned thought his act." Laertes nodded, but, catching his sister's amused glance, steeled himself for more. "Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar," Polonius continued. "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." Laertes bit his lip to hold back his impatience. "Beware of entrance to a quarrel but, being in, bear't that th'opposed may beware of thee." Laertes managed to draw his father into a slow walk toward the door, as Ophelia stifled a giggle, seeing her brother subjected to the same kind of lecture he had inflicted on her. "Give every man thy ear but few thy voice; take each man's censure but reserve thy judgment."
Laertes had by now reached the doorway, but Polonius showed no sign of letting up. "Costly thy habit as thy purse may buy," he said, fingering Laertes's traveling cloak with a bit of a frown, "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, boy, for loan oft loses both itself and friend and borrowing dulleth th'edge of husbandry." At the door, Polonius grasped Laertes by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. "This above all, to thine own self be true," he said, emphasizing the last five words with a sharp thrust of the finger into Laertes's chest at each one. Ophelia saw Laertes wince. "And it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man." Releasing him, Polonius said, "Farewell, my blessing season this in thee."
"Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord."
"The time invests you. Go, your servants tend," Polonius said, making shooing motions with his hand.
"Farewell, Ophelia," Laertes called out to her, "and remember well what I have said to you."
"'Tis in my memory locked and you yourself shall keep the key of it," she said, wiping a tear that had sprung to her eye.
With a last "Farewell," her brother was gone.
Polonius rounded on her sharply. "What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you?"
She knew that he had been listening, and was well aware that he was testing her on Laertes's lesson, but she tried to avoid examination. "So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet," she said, vaguely.
"Marry, well bethought," Polonius said. "'Tis told me he hath very oft of late given private time to you, and you yourself have of your audience been moth free and bounteous." This was far from true: Hamlet had kept his distance from her for some time now. She wondered who had told him this, and realized that it was partly a warning that he was having her watched. "If it be so -- as so 'tis put on me, and that in way of caution -- I must tell you that you do not understand yourself so clearly as it behooves my daughter and your honour. What is between you? Give me up the truth."
She had backed away but he pursued her. "He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection to me," she said, meekly. This was not true. Lately, Hamlet had been kind and polite to her at most. But since her father's discovery of the gold chain Hamlet had given her, it was hard to deny that the prince had once been attentive to her.
"Affection?" he scoffed. "Pooh, you speak like a green girl unsifted in such perilous circumstance. Do you believe his 'tenders,' as you call them?"
"I do not know, my lord, what I should think."
"Marry, I will teach you: Think yourself a baby that you have ta'en these tenders for true pay which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly or -- not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, wronging it thus -- you'll tender me a fool."
"My lord, he hath importuned me with love in honourable fashion."
She had put the stress on "honourable," but her father seized upon another word: "Ay, 'fashion' you may call it. Go to, go to," he said, shaking his head disapprovingly.
Having gotten herself into this trap, she tried to put the best possible face on it. "And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven." Again, Hamlet's expressions of love for her had been more fraternal than romantic, but she knew she could never persuade her father of this.
"Ay, springes to catch woodcocks -- I do know when the blood burns how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter, giving more light than heat, extinct in both even in their promise as it is a-making, you must not take for fire. From this time be something scanter of your maiden presence at a higher rate than a command to parle." She knew he had lapsed into the language of diplomacy, his native jargon, but she understood his drift. "For Lord Hamlet, believe so much in him that he is young and with a larger tether may he walk than may be given you. In few, Ophelia, do not believe his vows, for they are brokers not of that dye which their investments show but mere implorators of unholy suits breathing like sanctified and pious bonds the better to beguile."
His manner grew yet more severe, and she tried not to tremble. "This is for all," he said, "I would not in plain terms from this time forth have you so slander any moment leisure as to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet." She nodded. "Look to't, I charge you," he said, pointing at her the finger that he had recently stabbed into his son's chest. "Come your ways."
He turned on his heel, and she said, "I shall obey, my lord."
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