🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 05:53:51 GMT, John Fleming <nospam@sprynet.com>
spake thusly:

>On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 04:15:30 GMT, while chained to a desk in the
>scriptorium, Opus- <jbuchy@telus.net> wrote:
>
>> $ To illustrate the difficulty, take a look at Shakespears Hamlet. In
>> $the third act of Hamlet, just after the famous "To be, or not to be"
>> $soliloquy, Hamlet says to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery." 
>> $In Elizabethan England, nunnery was common slang for a brothel.
>> $Does Hamlet want Ophelia to go to a convent or to a bordello? Either
>> $meaning fits the context. Hamlet could be worried that Ophelia was
>> $likely to become "a breeder of sinners" and should remove herself from
>> $the temptations of the world by withdrawing into religion. Or �
>> $considering the presence of words such as harlot, and bawd in the
>> $immediate context, and considering that Hamlet decries Ophelia's
>> $"wantonness" � it is plausible that Hamlet, in disgust, was telling
>> $Ophelia to join the world's oldest profession. 
>
>It's also quite possible that Shakespeare meant this as a play on
>words--an Elizabethan pun so to speak   This would add a moment of
>humour to an otherwise somber drama.  The audience of the time, being
>familiar with both interpretations could have roared with laughter.

That is indeed very possible. I imagine it would have been quite
amusing at the time. 

-- 
jbuchy@hotmail.com 
(Jim, single dad to Lesleigh [Autistic] 04/20/94)

"What, Me Worry?" A. E. Newman

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