Note to Hamlet, 3.2.165-168: "Yet, though I distrust ... in extremity"

Here is my paraphrase of these four lines:

                   Yet, though I distrust,
                        Yet though I am worried about your health,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must,
     my worries must not give you any discomfort
For women's fear and love holds quantity;
     because women always fear for their husbands as much as they love them;
In neither aught, or in extremity.
     Either they don't love them and don't worry about them, or they love them extremely and worry about them extremely.

In the dialogue between the player king and the player king Shakespeare is not writing like himself; he is writing like the authors of the old-fashioned plays he saw as a boy. Everything is rhymed, and quite stiff, and quite full of moral generalizations. As a result, it is sometimes hard to follow.



Emma Drubruel as Player Queen; Nick Jones as Player King
--York Shakespeare Project, 2013--