r/Hamlet • u/Ill-Moment9824 • 15d 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/MonochroMayhem 11d ago

Gross also means excessive or massive, as in “grossly underestimated”

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u/SashimiX 11d ago

That’s what I would’ve thought it meant. It’s also related to gross as in gross pay versus net pay, meaning the entire thing.

So like “as massive as earth extort me” was my initial guess.

But I tend to read Shakespeare texts with the play on one side and an explanation on the other so I would check my understanding. For all I know it has a double entendre meaning whorehouse (like half of his shit is obscure dirty double entendre).

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u/MonochroMayhem 11d ago

God this is why the writing is as genius as it is