SARAH: Hamlet asks Ophelia two questions. The first is about her honesty — or her virtue. Honesty could mean being truthful, or being virtuous in general, but for a woman, it could also mean her chastity.

RALPH: The second question is about her being fair, or physically beautiful.

SARAH: These two questions set up an opposition between virtue and beauty that will shape the subsequent dialogue between Hamlet and Ophelia.

RALPH: Hamlet first claims that if Ophelia is both virtuous and beautiful, her virtue should not come into contact with her beauty, as if her beauty might corrupt her virtue.

SARAH: Ophelia's optimistic reply is that nothing is a better complement to beauty than virtue — that the two should naturally go together.

RALPH: Hamlet at first appears to agree with Ophelia, that beauty and virtue do indeed go together — but just as he did in his exchanges with Polonius in Act II, Hamlet twists Ophelia's words and turns her comment on its head. When Ophelia used the word commerce, she meant social exchange, or conversation. When Hamlet agrees with her, he takes commerce to mean sales or trade.

SARAH: He says that it's more likely, in this exchange between beauty and virtue, that Ophelia's beauty will corrupt her virtue, than her good morals will make her beauty virtuous. The exchange, or trade, between beauty and virtue only goes one way.

RALPH: Specifically, he says that her beauty will turn Ophelia's honesty into a bawd — a bawd is a pimp, or a go-between.

SARAH: When Hamlet says that this was sometimes a paradox, but now the time gives it proof, he's saying that he used to think that virtue couldn't be corrupted by beauty like this, but now it's been shown to be true.

RALPH: Is Hamlet referring to Ophelia's current situation? I mean, the way that she's going along with her father's plan to spy on Hamlet? Does he know that Claudius and Polonius are listening behind the curtain?

SARAH: It's possible, Ralph. But it's also possible that he's not talking about Ophelia at all, but rather his own mother. You'll remember that Hamlet thinks his mother remarried Claudius because she's motivated by lust.