Get Thee To A Nunnery

'Become thee to a nunnery' is a phrase that occurs in Shakespeare's play, Hamlet. It is something Village says to Ophelia, the young adult female with whom he is having a relationship at a moment when he is at his wit's stop. The verbal words Village'due south says are:

"If thou dost marry, I'll requite thee this plague for thy dowry. Exist thou as celibate as water ice, as pure equally snow, g shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, get. Good day. Or, if 1000 wilt needs marry, marry a fool, for wise men know well enough what monsters y'all make of them. To a nunnery, go, and speedily besides. Farewell."

Context of the phrase 'Get thee to a nunnery' in Village

The background to Hamlet using the famous phrase 'Get thee to a nunnery' needs some explaining, so conduct with us:

Hamlet has returned from university in Germany considering his father has died. As his father'southward heir, he expects to be crowned king. Instead, he finds that his father's brother, Claudius, has moved quickly to make himself rex.

Not only that, only Claudius has too won the amore of the belatedly king's wife, Hamlet's mother Gertrude, and married her. On summit of that Hamlet has just been told by the ghost that his uncle murdered his father.

Hamlet is less concerned nearly beingness disinherited than that his female parent has remarried, and particularly that she has married a human being and then junior to her late husband. And all so soon. To him, it is a mark of the frailty of the female person psyche. It is fifty-fifty more of a business organization for him than that his father has been murdered by the human who has now taken his place. At this point, his main issue is his realisation of how fickle women can be. He projects his disappointment with his mother on to all women, so when Ophelia approaches him she is a gear up target for his bitterness and anger.

Ophelia has just returned his letters and the gifts he has given her. That is pouring oil on troubled waters: it is something he sees every bit betrayal. He is then total of anger and injure that he lets fly at her. He grabs her and shouts at her, cursing the fickleness of women in general.

He tells her that the merely way she will be able to protect herself from her female person nature – the fickleness and expose that he attributes to women – would be to lock herself abroad in a nunnery where she will not have any contact with men and therefore be unable to betray them.

Meaning of 'Go thee to a nunnery'

Nunneries were convents, in which women lived, prayed and devoted themselves to God, and played no part in the kind of life that normal people lived. In convents, women couldn't marry and they couldn't be influenced by, or influence, men at all. Those circumstances are the only ones in which women are prevented from being unfaithful and in which they volition therefore cause the least amount of damage – being literally locked upwards.

Village's misogyny goes further. "Nunnery" was an Elizabethan slang term for a brothel. That makes his suggestion that she should get herself to a nunnery doubly offensive. On the one hand he is telling her to preserve her virtue and on the other suggesting that she should overindulge.

get thee to a nunnery, spoken by Hamlet

'Become thee to a nunnery', spoken by Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet to Kate Winslet as Ophelia

Explanation of Hamlet'southward 'Become thee to a nunnery' spoken language

On encountering Ophelia, Hamlet is in the worst emotional country possible. He starts by telling her that if she ever married, "be thou every bit chaste as ice, as pure as snowfall," or if non, "marry a fool" who would non exist wise enough to empathise "what monsters you make of them." His wild and vicious words are in great contrast to the loving words he has used towards her all her life.

Beingness in a nunnery meant that she would have no children, no daughters to grow up to betray men. "Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" he demands. "Get thee to a nunnery." "Get!" he yells.

Seeing Hamlet similar this terrifies and appalls Ophelia. This is the man she loves, and he has loved her. They accept known each other since childhood. They have exchanged gifts and talked virtually eventual marriage. His terrifying rage, approaching her with his apparel disarranged, his hair all over the place, his optics flaming, she is frightened and confused. At the end of the encounter all she tin do is milkshake her caput and make a sorry observation: "O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"

Ophelia is being used in this scene. Claudius, full of guilt and afraid of what Hamlet will do if he finds out what he has washed, is very cracking on finding out what he knows. He has a willing co-conspirator in Ophelia'south father, Polonius. They identify Ophelia in Village's mode and hide in a identify where they can overhear their conversation.

Information technology is possible that Hamlet is aware that he is being spied on. After all, Elsinore is a place where spying on people is routine. Being spied on is something Village expects and and then is able to have command past behaving in means that might advantage him.

In this instance, he may actually exist deliberately going over the elevation for the benefit of those spying on him. The event is that they now regard him as mad, which suits him.

As for Ophelia, this scene is one of the many examples of the experiences that pb up to her suicide. Throughout the play, up until her death, she is abused by men. Her father treats her abominably, every bit does Claudius, although the smoothen-tongued king does not use the abusive language towards her that Polonius does. And now, her lover, someone she should be able to depend on for back up and a loving attitude, bombards her with hateful sentiments and language.

Telling Ophelia "Go thee to a nunnery" is a key quote in Hamlet for all the reasons outlined.