Hamlet Love and Sexuality Quotes

Quoth she, Before you tumbled me
You promised me to wed.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5. In Ophelia’s song, during her mad phase, a man promises to marry a woman and then leaves her after bedding her. Many believe she is speaking about herself and Hamlet. Her madness allows her to give voice to her feelings and to sing about men who exploit young women – like her. Literary critic Carol Thomas Neely sees Ophelia’s madness to be "her liberation from silence, obedience, and constraint or her absolute victimization by patriarchal oppression."

Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet
It is our trick, nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will: when these are gone,
The woman will be out. – Adieu, my lord:
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns it.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7. Gertrude has just told Laertes that Ophelia has drowned. Laertes cannot hold back his tears for the sister he loved. He has lost his father and now his sister. This turns out to be the breaking point for Laertes and sets him firmly on a revenge quest against Hamlet. Crying is not a manly thing to Laertes, he says that after he stops crying "the woman will be out."

GERTRUDE: Here, Hamlet, take my napkin; rub thy brows.
The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet. [She lifts the cup.]
HAMLET: Good madam.
CLAUDIUS: Gertrude, do not drink.
GERTRUDE: I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me. [She drinks.]
CLAUDIUS [aside] It is the poisoned cup. It is too late.
HAMLET: I dare not drink yet, madam – by and by.
GERTRUDE: Come, let me wipe thy face.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. Gertrude drinks the cup of poisoned wine that Claudius has prepared for Hamlet, presumably to save her son from certain death. In a motherly gesture Gertrude also wipes the sweat from her son’s brow. In a terrible irony Claudius’ deceiving nature has killed his wife, after Gertrude’s love and loyalty were tested and torn throughout now her husband, in a botched attempt to kill her son, has killed her.
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