(We’re mashing up current events with Hamlet, the whole play, and you can start here in the middle or with this post.)

Ophelia has had her own visitation, but it wasn’t with the Ghost of Hamlet’s father, but with Hamlet himself. A dutiful, and possibly too dutiful daughter, she reports to her father the event, which arose after she returned Hamlet’s love letters at her father’s direction. Since in our telling of the play, Hamlet is all of us, and Ophelia is the promise of a restored republic, we can easily surmise what is coming between them.

(Carp here means fish; and we learn in this speech that those masculine, buttock-clenching Elizabethan tights had to be gartered; down–gyvved refers to fallen garters; closet here means room):

Ophelia: “O my lord, I have been in my closet.
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyvved to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors, he comes before me.”

Polonius: “Mad for thy love?”

Ophelia: “My lord, I do not know.
But truly I do fear it.”

Polonius: “What said he?”

Ophelia: “He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And with his other hand thus o’er his brow
He falls to such perusal of my face
As ‘a would draw it. Long stayed he so.
At last, a little shaking of mine arm
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being; that done, he lets me go”
And with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
He seem’d to find his way without his eyes,
For out o’ doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.”

Yep, that’s about how every conservative in the country felt after the election was stolen. Polonius, having caused the rift by demanding his daughter return the love letters, topple the statues, radicalize school curriculum, and of course overturn the election, suddenly gets the vapors:

Polonius: “Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.
This is the very ecstasy of love.
Whose violent property forgoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures.”…

Polonius goes on to ask his daughter if she has given Hamlet “any hard words of late.”

(Might move more grief to hide than hate to utter love means might cause more trouble by being hidden than it would cause by being admitted).

Ophelia: “No, my good lord, but as you did command
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.”

Polonius: “That hath made him mad.
I am sorry that with better heed and judgment
I had not quoted him. I feared he did but trifle
And meant to wrack thee. But beshrew my jealousy!
By heaven, it is as proper to our age
To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions
As it is common for the younger sort
To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.
This must be known, which, being kept close, might move
More grief to hide than hate to utter love.”

Polonius simply can’t believe his actions would cause Hamlet to storm the Capitol in an inarticulate rage at what had been denied him, first legitimate rule, and now what he personally loves most. Time to go to King Biden/Claudius and get an order to erect that barbed-wire fencing.