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Master Shakespeare, are you ready?

SHAKESPEARE:
As ready as any man may be, entering a room where love is examined like evidence.

GEORGE:
That’s exactly it. Because what happens here is not romance. It’s a controlled experiment—and Ophelia is the instrument.

GEORGE:
Let’s start with the setup. Claudius and Polonius plan to spy. They stage-manage Ophelia. They put a book in her hands. They position her.
What’s the moral temperature of this plan?

SHAKESPEARE:
Cold. And convenient.
They call it “care for her.” They call it “care for the prince.”
But the act is simple: they use her presence to harvest Hamlet’s secrets.

GEORGE:
And what’s chilling is how normal it seems to them. “We’ll just hide over here.”
It’s like a household trick.

SHAKESPEARE:
Power always wishes to be ordinary.
If it feels ordinary, it feels permissible.

GEORGE:
So right away, Ophelia enters a room where her feelings aren’t the point. Her feelings are the bait.

GEORGE:
Now—Ophelia. I want to underline something for listeners: she’s not “weak.” She’s trained.
She has been coached to obey father, brother, court—every authority that tells her what “good” looks like.

SHAKESPEARE:
A young woman in that world is praised for being governable.
They call it virtue.
But it is also control.

GEORGE:
So when Polonius gives her instructions, it isn’t just advice. It’s a system:
“Speak when told. Hold this. Stand here. Offer the tokens.”Four

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