What is that quote Methinks the lady doth protest too much? When do people use it?

Question

What is it? I don't get it. I've read it everywhere. I know it's like a Shakespeare quote...but...when do we use it?

Answer 1

It's from Shakespeare - when someone keeps saying that they didn't do something, the fact that they keep telling you they didn't do it, starts to make you suspicious that they did it.  Like if you ask a friend a question and she says "oh no I would never lie to you.  I hope you know I'm always truthful.  You don't think I'm lying do you? etc etc" the more she keeps it up, the more you start thinking hey maybe she's lying......

Answer 2

Player Queen:

Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,

If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!

Player King:

'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while,

My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile

The tedious day with sleep.

Player Queen:

Sleep rock thy brain,

And never come mischance between us twain!

Hamlet:

Madam, how like you this play?

Queen:

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222–230

Almost always misquoted as "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Queen Gertrude's line is both drier than the misquotation (thanks to the delayed "methinks") and much more ironic. Prince Hamlet's question is intended to smoke out his mother, to whom, as he intended, this Player Queen bears some striking resemblances [see THE PLAY'S THE THING]. The queen in the play, like Gertrude, seems too deeply attached to her first husband to ever even consider remarrying; Gertrude, however, after the death of Hamlet's father, has remarried. We don't know whether Gertrude ever made the same sorts of promises to Hamlet's father that the Player Queen makes to the Player King (who will soon be murdered)—but the irony of her response should be clear.

By "protest," Gertrude doesn't mean "object" or "deny"—these meanings postdate Hamlet. The principal meaning of "protest" in Shakespeare's day was "vow" or "declare solemnly," a meaning preserved in our use of "protestation." When we smugly declare that "the lady doth protest too much," we almost always mean that the lady objects so much as to lose credibility. Gertrude says that Player Queen affirms so much as to lose credibility. Her vows are too elaborate, too artful, too insistent. More cynically, the queen may also imply that such vows are silly in the first place, and thus may indirectly defend her own remarriage.

Answer 3

Let me give you an example.. One in gradeschool I was sitting alone at a table and suddenly another student came by and overturned 1/2 of a milkshake onto the table, I was stunned, he ran away and within moments the janitor came by, saw the mess and had to clean it up.  I was the only one there and he looked at me in an accusing way... reflexively I protested, "It wasn't me!", his reply to me was, "Methinks thou dost protesteth too much.", which is a formal and hoity toity way of saying, "Gee sucka, if you diduhndt do it, why you bein so loud about it?!"  This expression is directed at someone that is being very vocal denying something when the evidence seems to indicate that they are actually at fault.  It's short of calling someone a liar, but it still conveys the idea that their 'protest' is dubious at best.