RALPH: Ecstasy comes from the Greek word ekstasis, meaning to put something out of place. The word was sometimes used in expressions meaning something like, "being beside yourself", or "being driven out of your wits". The word could refer to literal insanity, but also to a more temporary state, like a trance.

SARAH: Today, ecstasy almost always refers to a positive emotional state — like euphoria, bliss, or rapture.

RALPH: But earlier, the word had a more negative connotation — madness, anxiety, frenzy, or stupor. And that's certainly how it's used here — Polonius is imagining Hamlet in some kind of frenzy, provoked by the intensity of his love, and by Ophelia's apparent rejection.

SARAH: And this ecstasy, at least according to Polonius, has a destructive force - its "violent property fordoes itself," meaning it ruins or destroys the love that produced it.

RALPH: The verb "fordo" comes from the prefix for-, meaning off or away, as in forestall, or put off, and the original meaning of the verb to do, which was to put or to place something. So to fordo meant to put something or someone away, to destroy it or kill it. And this is echoed in our modern phrase to "do off" or "do away with somebody".

SARAH: So the ecstacy of love, this frenzy that Hamlet is in, is so violent that it destroys whatever love might have existed between Ophelia and Hamlet — especially on Ophelia's side, since now she has even more reason to be afraid of him than anything else.

RALPH: Of course, we should remember that this is all coming from Polonius — Ophelia hasn't said anything about all this.