Hamlet and Ophelia: "Get thee to a nunnery"

OpheliaGood my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?

HamletI humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OpheliaMy lord, I have remembrances of yours That I have longed long to re-deliver. I pray you, now receive them.

HamletNo, not I. I never gave you aught.

OpheliaMy honour’d lord, you know right well you did, And with them words of so sweet breath compos’d 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.

HamletHa, ha! Are you honest?

OpheliaMy lord?

HamletAre you fair?

OpheliaWhat means your lordship?

HamletThat if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OpheliaCould beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HamletAy, 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.

OpheliaIndeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HamletYou should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not.

OpheliaI was the more deceived.

HamletGet 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 offences 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. Where’s your father?

OpheliaAt home, my lord.

HamletLet the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

OpheliaO help him, you sweet heavens!

HamletIf thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.