I shall the effect of this good lesson keep
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. We first meet Ophelia in this scene. Laertes has been warning her not to trust Hamlet’s romantic declarations. Using a metaphor, Ophelia promises to keep Laertes’ lesson “as watchman to my heart.” But she also deftly turns her brother’s religious advice back on him. For he is about to depart for study in Paris, a city full of moral temptations for a young man. Ophelia tells him not to preach like a hypocritical pastor, showing her the “thorny way to heaven” while himself treading the “primrose path” of pleasures. After warning her to keep her chastity, she tells him not to be a “puffed and reckless libertine.”