Today’s Totally Random
Lines
Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do
know,
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter,
Giving more light than heat - extinct in
both,
Even in their promise, as it is a-making,
-
You must not take for fire.
Polonius
Hamlet Act I, Scene iii, Line 117
It’s amazing
that I taught this play to a high school class and I can still go back to it
and not recall having read so very much of it. I guess, to be fair, that class
was over twenty years ago, so…
Anyway, this is a scene with brother, sister, and father. Brother Laertes has already left the scene, on his way to France, but not before telling his sister Ophelia to stay away from Hamlet. He gave her a good talking to about how Hamlet was no good for her. Now father Polonius is talking to daughter Ophelia and telling her pretty much the same thing. Today’s lines are the beginning of Polonius’s lecture to his daughter, in response to her lines
My lord, he hat importuned me with love
In honourable
fashion…
…And hath
given countenance to his speech, my lord,
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Polonius is referring to Hamlet’s holy vows of heaven as springes to catch woodcocks.
In any event, after telling her in his very wordy way, to stay away from Hamlet, Ophelia ends the scene with the words,
I shall obey, my lord.
So that’s the end of that. Well, not really.
But that springes
to catch woodcocks reminds me of something. What was it?
Oh yeah, I
gotta put out mouse traps!
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