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utorak, 04.05.2010.

maggots

'But more than this, while he fears that Ophelia will prove false (defetizam + 'real-politik'), the greater fear is that she has valued his love, and even returned it (misfired Jesus).It is her confession that she believed in it that provokes the horrified exclamation, 'Wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?'. For that is love and marriage lead to, the propagation of one's kind (defetizam + 'real-politik'), and it explains the nature of Hamlet's recoil.
Itis a recoil for which the play has prepared: for the present dialogue with Ophelia only brings to the surface what has been in Hamlet's mind before (defetizam + 'real-politik'), as the 'method' of his madness has been used to show. He has associated Polonius's daughter with ideas of mating and breeding and the sort of life they may bring forth (ultra-defetizam + ultra-real-politik).
In his mad talk he called Polonius 'a fishmonger' and suddenly interjected 'Have youa daughter?' It was believed that the daughters of fishmongers were unusually prone to breed; and the thought of daughter here comes straight upon a nauseous example:

If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion...

With the word in a double sense, 'a good kissing carrion' may be one way of describing the fair Ophelia herself, and the point of requiring her to be protected from the sun, though much obscured by critical ingenuities, should be clear. 'Conception is a blessing', Hamlet goes on, 'but as your daughter may conceive -' with the sun and the maggots in mind it may be betterthat she should not. (defetizam + real-politik)

Hamlet, The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare, Routledge, reprinted in 1993.
Introduction, stranica 150, 151.

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