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All Site ContentHamletAct 4Scene 7
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"love is begun by time...time qualifies the spark and fire of it"
Wordplay
Act 4,
Scene 7
Lines 93-102a

An explanation of wordplay in Act 4, Scene 7 of myShakespeare’s Hamlet.

Claudius

Laertes, was your father dear to you, 
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?

Laertes

                                         Why ask you this?

Claudius

Not that I think you did not love your father, 
But that I know love is begun by time, 
And that I see, (in passages of proof),
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.    
Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake
To show yourself your father's son in deed,
More than in words?

This line can be read two ways:

  • Love begins at a certain point in time.
  • It diminishes with the passage of time.