There has been much discussion of this passage, but no satisfactory solution of it. It is a good sample of the enigmatic style of speech characteristic of Hamlet, which presumably the audiences of Shakespeare's day comprehended, which of course the astute Polonius did not understand, and which puzzles later generations because they have lost the ancient significance of certain words. Polonius is so prejudiced in favor of his theory that it was "the very ecstacy of love" that troubled Hamlet, that he does not even attempt to fathom his allusions. And yet Hamlet's last remark, warning him about his daughter, rivets his attention, and he demands to know what is meant by it; but it is only for an instant, his illusion again diverts him from the matter, and the chance of explanation thus escapes. Malone says that "fishmonger" was a cant term for a "wencher"; and in Barnabe Rich's 'Irish Hubbub' is the expression "senex fornicator, an old fishmonger." Possibly this is its primary significance in Hamlet's mind, for shortly afterwards he satirically says of Polonius to the players: "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." In several instances Shakespeare similarly alludes to "fishing"; as in 'Measure for Measure,' i, 2, 91: "Groping for trouts in a peculiar river"; 'Winter's Tale,' i, 2, 195: "And his pond fish'd by his next neighbor"; and possibly in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' i, 4, 4: "He fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revels." The word "monger" in compound words, as used by Shakespeare, does not always mean a trader in the article, but sometimes one who merely indulges in the act; as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' ii, 1, 253: "Thou art an old love-monger"; in 'Romeo and Juliet,' ii, 4, 30: "These strange flies, these fashion-mongers"; and in 'Measure for Measure,' v, 1, 337: "Was the Duke a fleshmonger?" In common usage the word has this double significance, indeed, dependent upon whether its adjunct refers to a thing or to an act; as, for example, cheesemonger and scandalmonger, and other similar compounds which will readily suggest themselves. Hence "fishmonger" means both one given to "fishing" and a trader in fish. And doubtless the latter is its most important significance in Hamlet's mind, when Polonius denies that he is a fishmonger, namely that he is a trader in a food which from time immemorial has been supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Wherefore we are to understand Hamlet as meaning that Polonius is not so honest a man as the fishmonger that Polonius has in mind, or the senex fornicator that he originally had in mind, but that he is a fleshmonger,--a pander, as Tieck puts it;--"traders in flesh" such persons are termed in 'Troilus and Cressida,' v, 11, 46. It is supposed by Tieck that the allusion is to the way in which Polonius threw Hamlet and Ophelia together, by Friesen that it refers to his pandering to the desires of Claudius and the Queen before the old King's death, and by Doering that it points to his