Hamlet's sexual obsessions

Posted on February 6, 2007

Hamlet III.iv.14-15; 29-30

You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife.
And would it were not so, you are my mother.
...
A bloody deed? Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.

Hamlet III.iv.92-97

Ham: Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseaméd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty--

Ger: O, speak to me no more!
These words like daggers enter in my ears.
No more, sweet Hamlet.

Hamlet III.ii.351-59

'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother.
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

Hamlet III.iv.163-71

Good night--but go not to my uncle's bed.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy ...

Hamlet III.iv.185-190

Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,
Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,
And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out ...