The lady doth protest too much

Cultural  

1. A line from the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, spoken by Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. She is watching a play, and a character in it swears never to remarry if her husband dies. The play is making Hamlet's mother uncomfortable, because she herself remarried almost immediately after the murder of her first husband.

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Example Sentences

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” she whispers of an overwrought performance shown on stage in the Shakespearean tragedy.

From Barron's

The lady doth protest too much?

From Los Angeles Times

The lady doth protest too much, he thinks, in the TV movie “Framed by My Husband.”

From Los Angeles Times

“The lady doth protest too much, me think. If you have you to explain as hard as you can, and spend with as much political might as you can, why you laid 4.4 million people off because you felt better to tell Mitch McConnell in a program that put out and saved 30 million jobs that you are going to hold it up to prove a point — that’s not what I’d want to hear in history,” he said.

From Washington Times

As you cast about for meaning, you may remember Hamlet’s mother, the real queen, who in this same section says, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

From New York Times