Prior to this passage, Hamlet seems to be primarily driven by the need for revenge against Claudius. However, in this passage, Shakespeare uses a metaphor to reveal that Hamlet’s hate is directed not only at Claudius, but at all of humanity. When Ophelia tells Hamlet that he loved her, he says she should not have trusted him because “virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock”. This metaphor involves plant grafting, a practice in which the upper part of one plant, the scion, is joined to the lower part of another, the stock. Hamlet argues that humans, which are the stock, cannot gain virtue, which is represented by the scion to be inoculated onto the stock. He argues that even if humans try to make changes, they will always “relish”, or retain,