What

Title:
Shakespe ares HAMLET 3.1.88-89. By: Shapiro, Daniel, Explicator, 00144940, Spring2003, Vol. 61, Issue 3
Database:
MAS Ultra - condition Edition
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Shakespeares HAMLET 3.1.88-89

In act 3 of Hamlet. Polonius sets out Ophelia as bait for Hamlet--looses her to him, as he says. not only occasions are informing against Hamlet; Claudius and Polonius are conspiring against him too, and Ophelia, wittingly or not, is part of the conspiracy. Hamlet, like his father, has been betrayed by the muliebrity he loves.
In act 3, scene 1, Hamlet enters and delivers the close to famous soliloquy in English literature: To be or not to be. Then he sees Ophelia, who is apparently praying. He interrupts himself and says, Soft you now, the fair Ophelia! Then, the consensus has it, he approaches her and says: Nymph, in thy orisons be either my sins remembered. This is where the consensus breaks down, the issue being whether Hamlet is sincere or ironic. Does he really want Ophelia to pray for him? Or is he scoffing, recounting her that her prayer--and much else--is a sham, that her devotion (as Polonius himself says) can sugar all over / The devil himself?
John Dover Wilson was solidly on the grimace of irony.



This is how he put it in What Happens in Hamlet:
romanticistic actors interpret this as gushing tenderness [...] Dowden [editor program of the 1899 Arden Hamnlet] however, sees estrangement in the word nymph and I find deliberate affectation in that word and in orisons [... These words] surely indicate a sardonic tone. (128)
But even the authority of Wilson has not settled the matter. Harold Jenkins, the editor of the current Arden Hamlet, says (quoting Samuel Johnson) the line is grave and solemn (Johnson) rather than ironical (Dover Wilson) (280,fn.). (It might be worth noting that C. T. Onions, in his Shakespeares Glossary defines nymph simply as a young and attractive woman, giving no intensional meaning and...If you want to get a full essay, rules of order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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