Hamlet Quote Analysis

Polonius proposes a plan to test whether Hamlet's madness is caused by love: he will send Ophelia to meet Hamlet while he and Claudius spy from behind a tapestry.

The verb 'loose' treats Ophelia like bait or livestock, stripped of agency. Polonius does not ask her consent; she is a tool in his experiment, and the plan reduces her encounter with Hamlet to a performance staged for male observers.

Use this to argue that Ophelia is objectified by the men who claim to protect her—Polonius's language here reveals that he sees his daughter as a resource to be deployed, not a person with her own interior life.