Pol. Good Madam stay awhile, I will be faithfull. Doubt thou, the Starres are fire, [Sidenote: Letter] Doubt, that the Sunne doth moue; Doubt Truth to be a Lier, But neuer Doubt, I loue.[3] O deere Ophelia, I am ill at these Numbers: I haue not Art to reckon my grones; but that I loue thee best, oh most Best beleeue it. Adieu. Thine euermore most deere Lady, whilst this Machine is to him, Hamlet. This in Obedience hath my daughter shew'd me: [Sidenote: Pol. This showne] And more aboue hath his soliciting, [Sidenote: more about solicitings] As they fell out by Time, by Meanes, and Place, All giuen to mine eare.
King. But how hath she receiu'd his Loue?
Pol. What do you thinke of me?
King. As of a man, faithfull and Honourable.
Pol. I wold faine proue so. But what might you think?
[Footnote 1: Not in Quarto.]
[Footnote 2: Point thus: 'but you shall heare. These, in her excellent white bosom, these:'
Ladies, we are informed, wore a small pocket in front of the bodice;—but to accept the fact as an explanation of this passage, is to cast the passage away. Hamlet addresses his letter, not to Ophelia's pocket, but to Ophelia herself, at her house—that is, in the palace of her bosom, excellent in whiteness. In like manner, signing himself, he makes mention of his body as a machine of which he has the use for a time. So earnest is Hamlet that when he makes love, he is the more a philosopher. But he is more than a philosopher: he is a man of the Universe, not a man of this world only.
We must not allow the fashion of the time in which the play was written, to cause doubt as to the genuine heartiness of Hamlet's love-making.]
[Footnote 3: 1st Q.