She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
– William Shakespeare
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. Hamlet is not only disgusted with his mother’s hasty remarriage soon after his father’s death, but also because he believes that she has committed “incest” by wedding his father’s brother. In Shakespearean times such a marriage of close relatives would have been regarded as incest. Personification is used to good effect in this passage, with sheets being described as “incestuous.”