HAMLET

 ACT III

OPHELIA

How does your honour for his   many a day?

HAMLET

I humbly thank you well, well, well.

OPHELIA

My lord, I have remembrances of yours

That I have longed long to re-deliver.

I pray you now receive them.

HAMLET

No, not I.

I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honoured lord, you know right well you did,

And with them words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,

Take this again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifs wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET

Ah, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA

My lord?

HAMLET

Are you fair?

OPHELIA

What means your lordship?

HAMLET

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

OPHELIA

Could beauty, my lord, had better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET

Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform  honesty from what  is to a bawd than the force  of honesty can translate  beauty into his likeness . This was sometimes a paradox , but now the time  gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA

Indeed, lord, you  made me believe so.

HAMLET

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

OPHELIA

I was the more deceived.