To be, or not to be; the nunnery scene

Claudius and Polonius set the trap. Ophelia is given a prayer book — a prop to make her presence in the corridor look natural — and stationed where Hamlet will pass. The two men withdraw behind an arras. Hamlet enters and, alone, delivers the soliloquy that has become the most famous passage in Western literature. "To be, or not to be: that is the question." It is not, narrowly, about suicide; it is about whether to act in the face of the world's suffering at all. The end of the speech turns the whole question on conscience — "thus conscience does make cowards of us all" — and on the way thinking unmakes the will to do anything.

He sees Ophelia. The conversation begins gently — she returns his old letters, asks about his health — and then turns. He is suddenly furious. He denies he ever loved her. He tells her, three times, to get to a nunnery. (The Elizabethan slang for brothel was also "nunnery" — an ambiguity Shakespeare exploits.) She tries to give him back his gifts; he tells her to keep them. She lies when he asks where her father is — "at home, my lord" — and Hamlet, who has guessed they are being watched, turns the cruelty up a notch. Women, he says, are responsible for everything; they paint themselves; they make monsters of men; they should never marry; he will permit no more marriages. He storms out. Ophelia, alone, weeps the famous lament: "O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"

Claudius and Polonius emerge. Claudius is unconvinced by the love-madness theory — Hamlet's words "lacked form a little" but were not "like madness." There is something dangerous in him. Claudius decides to send him to England, ostensibly for a diplomatic mission, in fact to keep him out of the kingdom. Polonius, still committed to his theory, proposes one more test. Hamlet should be confronted by his mother privately after the play tonight; Polonius will hide behind the arras and listen. Whatever Hamlet says to his mother in confidence will give the truth away. Claudius agrees.