Why?
_Pietro_. Why? thou, thou hast dishonoured my bed.
Hamlet's words: [53]--'O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity
to incestuous sheets!' are so often ridiculed because Shakspere, instead
of the word 'bed,' uses the more unusual 'sheets.'
Aurelia [54] speaks of 'chaste sheets,' Malevole [55] prophesies that
'the Dutches (Duke, Doge) sheets will smoke for't ere it be long.'
Mendozo [56] 'hates all women, waxe-lightes, antique bed-postes,' &c.;
'also sweete sheetes.' Aurelia, parodying the words Hamlet addresses
to his mother, asks herself: 'O, judgement, where have been my eyes?
What bewitched election made me dote on thee? what sorcery made me love
thee?'
The counsel which Hamlet gives to his mother 'to throw away the worser
part of her cleft heart,' Pietro ridicules in act i. sc. 7:--
My bosome and my heart,
When nothing helps, cut off the rotten part.
The splendid speech of Hamlet: 'What a piece of work is man!' sounds
from Mendozo's [57] lips thus:--'In body how delicate; in soule how
wittie; in discourse how pregnant; in life how warie; in favours how
juditious; in day how sociable; in night how!--O pleasure unutterable!'
Hamlet's little monologue: [58] 'Tis now the very witching time of night,'
runs thus with Mendozo:--[59]
'Tis now about the immodest waste of night;
The mother of moist dew with pallide light
Spreads gloomie shades about the mummed earth.
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