The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Hamlet stages the play Murder of Gonzago which follows a similar sequence of events, to test whether viewing it will trigger a guilty conscience in Claudius.

Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and others watch the play-within-the-play, as the Player Queen declares in flowery language that she will never remarry if her husband dies.

She replies, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks", meaning that the Player Queen's declarations of love and fidelity are too excessive and insistent to be credible.

[4][5] The line's allusion to Gertrude's (lack of) fidelity to her husband has become a cliché of sexually fickle womanhood[6] and a shorthand expression conveying doubt of a person's truthfulness, even when the subject is male.

[7] It is commonly used to suggest that someone who denies something very strongly must be hiding the truth;[2] however, in the play, protest has the older meaning of 'vow' or 'declare' rather than 'deny'.