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.
Sleepe, sleepe, whilst we contrive our mischiefes birth.
Then, parodying Hamlet as he draws forth the dead Polonius from behind the arras, Mendozo says:—
This man Ile (I'll) get inhumde.
Thus, all kinds of Shaksperian incidents and locutions are brought forward, wherever they are apt to produce the most comic effect. Several times, from the beginning, the 'weasel' is mentioned with which Hamlet rallies Polonius. We also hear of the 'sponge which sucks'—a simile used by Hamlet (act iv. sc. 3) in regard to Rosencrantz. Nor is the 'true-penny' forgotten—a word used by Hamlet [60] to designate his father's ghost as a true and genuine one; nor the 'Hillo, ho, ho.'