HAMLET
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?OPHELIA
No, my lord.HAMLET
I mean, my head upon your lap?OPHELIA
Ay, my lord.HAMLET
Do you think I meant country matters?OPHELIA
I think nothing, my lord.HAMLET
That's a fair thought to lie between maids'
legs.OPHELIA
What is, my lord?HAMLET
Nothing.
(3.2.119-128)
Hamlet's dirty talk (which we translate into modern lingo in "Steaminess Rating") puts Ophelia in an impossible situation. When Hamlet makes lewd innuendos, Ophelia can't respond in a way that suggests she knows what he's talking about. If she does, then it would suggest that she knows a little too much about sex. This could be as damaging to her reputation as, say, losing her virginity before marriage. Our point? Hamlet gets the power to control Ophelia's conversation, just like Polonius and Laertes have the power to control her body.
HAMLET
Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that mattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven,
Repent what's past, avoid what is to come,
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue,
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg,
Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.
QUEEN GERTRUDE
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!
(3.4.165-177)
There's that word "rank" again. This time, Hamlet warns Gertrude to stop spreading "compost on the weeds" (sleeping with Claudius), which will make her sins (incest) even "ranker" than they already are. What's more, Hamlet's talk of "ulcers," "infection," and "corruption" seems to allude to venereal disease. It's as though Hamlet thinks women are contagious. Given contemporary standards of hygiene, we're thinking both men and women were running around contagious most of the time.
Quote 39
HAMLET
[…]That it should come to this:
But two months dead—nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and Earth.
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on. And yet, within a month
(Let me not think on 't; frailty, thy name is woman!)
[…]
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.
(1.2.141-150; 161-164)
Hamlet's got a serious problem with mom. It's not just that he's disgusted by Gertrude's incestuous marriage to Claudius —Hamlet can hardly stand to think about his mother having sex, period. Which, um, seems normal to us. What's not normal is the way that he keeps thinking about it, anyway.