RALPH: Suddenly Hamlet seems to go a little crazy — recommending that Ophelia lock herself away in a convent, in order to avoid giving birth to more sinners.

SARAH: And although Ophelia seems to have been the target of most of Hamlet's insults so far, now he turns them towards himself — something we've certainly seen him do before in his soliloquys.

RALPH: He begins by saying he's reasonably virtuous — "indifferent honest" as he puts it. And yet, even so, he accuses himself of a long list of bad qualities, and suggests that he would have committed even more sins if he'd had the cleverness, the imagination, or the time to commit them.

SARAH: As Hamlet has done in his soliloquys, he alternates between his specific case and the general condition of humanity — here he generalizes, beginning with "such fellows as I" and then continuing with "We are arrant knaves, all" — absolute scoundrels. But perhaps he means only men here, that Ophelia should not believe any men?

RALPH: This might be the case, Sarah, since Hamlet seems particularly worried about Ophelia's chastity. He returns to his idea of Ophelia going to a convent — and this reinforces his earlier concern with the possibility that Ophelia's virtue is in danger of corruption.