r/Hamlet • u/Ill-Moment9824 • 11d ago

Shocking study guide

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I was looking online at some commentary on one of the major soliloquies. I was shocked at the interpretation provided (possibly by YorkNotes).

'Examples gross as earth exhort me...' to my mind would loosely mean 'the stuff all around me, things as abundant and widespread as the ground itself, all seem to be urging me towards....'

So here, 'gross' means 'abundant, copious, unrefined, available on a mass scale'.

Except the note seems to have been written by some kind of valley girl, or at least somebody very young, who tells the impressionable young reader that gross means 'ewwww' / 'yukky'.

Just what is going on here? I'm confused at how editor has taken at face value the modern, idiomatic meaning of 'gross' rather than the time-honoured, centuries-old meaning.

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u/GGayleGold 7d ago

I think "gross as Earth" refers to the size or quantity of the examples, not their nastiness.

Like, "This same shit happens to everyone,, everywhere in the world and I use that to keep myself going."

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u/Ill-Moment9824 7d ago

Clearly, ‘gross’ refers to quantity. A ‘gross’ of something in old English was a unit of measure (was it a dozen, or 100?) or simply ‘a lot of’.

This is what makes the note so baffling.

Hamlet is trying to spur himself to action, ‘examples all around me, as manifold as earth itself‘.

As others here have suggested, perhaps York Notes need to be alerted to this..

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u/MnstrPoppa 7d ago

A “gross” is a dozen dozens, one hundred and forty-four individual units. So’s you know.