Hamlet's Third Soliloquy: Ophelia Walking In The Courtyard Reading A Book, The King And Her Father Hiding Close By Poem by Dennis Ryan

Saturday night, January 3,2015 at 10: 15 p.m.

"Ophelia, walk you here...
We will bestow ourselves.Read on this book;
That show of such an exercise may color/your loneliness."
- the character Polonius giving instructions to his daughter Ophelia
in William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, ll.44-47

Hamlet: "I did love you once."
Ophelia: "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so."
Hamlet: "You should not have believed me... I loved you not."
Ophelia: "I was the more deceived."
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, ll.116-121

Are you here?I pray thee, now that we live
in modern days, partake of this, my message:
Do you deceive me too, as your father did,
and the king before him?Am I meat meant
for table—cow feed merely to feed your calf
feeding thee in turn, thy vanity?Think on this.
Speak now to me—I will brook no generous
thanks from gracious, treacherous lips!You speak
too well, too rightly, too timely—you know what
to say, when, and how, and remain silent on the rest,
my questions gone answered. Do they mean anything
to you?(Oh, that I am the more deceived,over and again!
Oh, that you were the angel I dreamt— "Angel of learning
and knowledge" as I had written on your native tongue.
All for naught now, methinks.) And to think ours was
a marriage once brokered in heaven, your true mind married
to mine, merry—I surmised as much perusing conversation
after conversation with you burning long into the night,
your words emblazoned on my soul as I thought them,
and now, O Now—to see it come to this!Your sweet
tenders returned tonight with false lips,acts and eyes—
you tent me to the quick!So I thought one hour removed,
your pale image writ large in memory as I traversed roads
in darkness on an errand for my father, Old Hamlet's ghost.
Only then to be illumined blood for blood, as to machinations
performed by king and queen, your role to follow quickly,
naturally thereafter—As now, here it is! —and thus your yon
image shriveled!Would it were not so!Were thus not thus!
Would I had back that true poem I just composed for you!
(Did you confess, and your private harshly shrive you,
whisper your penance into the porches of mine ear to curry
my favor?It feels so.) Understand you this foreign word
of long ago?And conclude from it?But wait. But wait...
I hear a warning if it's given.And if you have, we are met—
well as ever, thrive despite obstacles.Attend me, as if you are
walking in the courtyard here reading your book.I never meant
"I loved you not.Never!Get you to—! "What did I mean
then?I know not at that time.Meantime, I whisper you this...