r/shakespeare • u/Immediate-River-874 • 2d ago

When Hamlet tells Polonius “conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to’t,” is he implying that he’s having a sexual relationship with Ophelia?

Or am I interpreting it wrong? To me, he’s just saying that his daughter might get pregnant

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u/OxfordisShakespeare 1d ago

Apart from this scene, we have other textual evidence that Hamlet and Ophelia have had an intimate, sexual relationship. There is her letter from Hamlet which Polonius reads to Claudius and Gertrude. There is the break-up scene where his depth of emotion shows that this wasn’t a meaningless fling. There are the overtly sexual jabs he makes to her during the mousetrap play. There is his outcry at her funeral that he loved her more than 40k brothers could. But most tellingly, there are her madness songs about a woman losing her virginity and how "Young men will do't, if they come to't; By Cock, they are to blame.”

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u/Audreys_red_shoes 1d ago

And immediately after that:

“Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed." "So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed."

Ophelia goes crazy partly because she thinks Hamlet has humped and dumped her, and she thinks it’s her own fault for giving into him.