For Virtue Cannot So Inoculate Meaning?

" [. . .] for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it." This quote is significant to the speaker, Hamlet, in that it accentuates both his hypocrisy and his underlying acceptance and knowledge of his own corruption.

What does Hamlet mean when he says you should not have believed me for virtue Cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it I loved you not?

Hamlet tells Ophelia she shouldn't have believed him when he said he loved her, because men are all liars. "Our old stock" means men, the male sex. He's trying to warn Ophelia that all men will be liars in response to her beauty.

What does inoculate mean in Hamlet?

At that time, as well as in Shakespeare's, to inoculate meant to graft one type of plant onto another. SARAH: The word comes from the image of placing a tiny bud into the center of a larger plant — putting an eye, or, in Latin, occulus, in the other organism, that is to, in-oculate.