Hamlet
Act 3, Sc. 1, lines 112-133: Why does Hamlet blame beauty for the loss of a woman's honesty?
Hamlet. Ha, ha! Are you honest?
Ophelia. My lord?
Hamlet. Are you fair?
Ophelia. What means your lordship?
Hamlet. That if you honest and fair, your honesty should
admit no discourse to your beauty.
Ophelia. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
Hamlet. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner
transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of
honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was
sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did
love you once.
Ophelia. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
Hamlet. You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved
you not.
Ophelia. I was the more deceived.
Hamlet. Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I
could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother
had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious,
with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put
them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth
and heaven? We arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go
thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?