has lost faith
in humanity at the point when he meetsin this scene. His uncle has allegedly murdered his
father. His mother has married his uncle. His old friends have come, supposedly to see him, but
he has already figured out they were "sent for" byto scope out 's state of mind. And
now, here comes Ophelia, the girl he is deeply in love with, to give him back the letters he has
given her.
The dialogue also implies that Hamlet knows he's being listened
to, and if he has figured that out, by the time he utters the line "Get thee to a
nunnery" toward the end of the scene, he probably suspects that Ophelia has taken part in
the plot against him.
Everybody looks pretty bad from Hamlet's perspective.
So why should Ophelia get married and have children, or, in other words, make more people like
Claudius, , his mother, Rosencrantz, , and Ophelia?
Hamlet wants her to shut
herself off from the rest of the worldwhich, in a convent, she would have to do. However, you
could argue he still loves her and is saying this out of jealousy: if she's a nun, no other guy
will be able to pursue her. Either way, he wants her to be punished for breaking his heart and
being the tool of Claudius.
On a small side note, the word
"convent" or "nunnery," in Elizabethan England, was a slang term for a house
of prostitution. So, Hamlet may be calling her a rude name for breaking up with him (while at
the same time expressing a deep-seated misanthropy).
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